I am the survivor of trauma and PTSD.  I always remembered what happened to me.  I’d rather not remember.  I’d rather bad things never happened to me at all and I’d never have to deal with them.  Bad things did happen and I have to deal whether I want to or not.  I found ways not to have to deal with remembering by never really looking directly at the pictures in my head.  I guess I figured that turning a blind eye would make everything go away.  The problem was that my feelings didn’t go away.  Sometimes I wouldn’t feel there at all.  Sometimes I’d feel all edgy and anxious.  Sometimes I’d feel all confused and guilty.  It was weird.  When things got quiet or good, I’d feel scared.  When people got close to me I felt scared. When people touched me I’d feel terrified. I’d have all sorts of weird triggers and I never put them together with the pictures in my head that I didn’t want to see.  When I got into therapy that told me to look at the pictures in my head I’d fall apart emotionally and run away.  Then I’d feel guilty like I was really crazy and I’d never get better.

What helped me was joining support groups.  There’s something about being with people going through the same thing helps me feel less crazy when I am triggered.

The second thing that helped me was studying psychotherapy because I wanted to understand what I was dealing with. I wanted to learn what therapists supposedly knew about getting better.

What really started me getting better was figuring how my feelings were a form of memory.  I think of Bees tell a story through dance by buzzing their wings so they can tell a feeling story without words. Brail tells stories without pictures.  Brail tells feeling stories.

My feelings of fear, confusion, guilt and shame were an emotional story about what happened to me.  The story is that I was frightened and became confused, guilty and ashamed.  When I realized that the pictures in my head and the feelings in my body made perfect sense together I began to understand my triggers.  I began to understand myself and my story in a way that finally made sense.

Knowing that feeling is a type of memory helped heal me.

Knowing that feeling is a form of memory helps my clients heal.

You don’t have to hold every picture of trauma in your head to heal. Feeling can be enough.

Feelings are a form of memory that can be understood.

I am a survivor of incest and PTSD.  I am also a psychotherapist and work with many clients who are survivors of incest.  I am also a trained Family Therapist. I am writing this to help people understand therapy so they can better use therapy and heal faster.  I think people healing from incest need to understand therapy better before they can trust therapy because their sense of trust has been shattered by trauma.  Healing from incest is about a family therapy where the family of origin is so sick that the family of origin can’t participate in any way that is healthy.

The person who was molested often has to heal alone and isolated without the support that a healthy family can offer.  In incestuous families the people who should protect us are perpetrators.    In incestuous families the people who deny incest or remain silent about incest become quiet accomplices.  Family member or members who speak up about incest are often criticized, shunned, cut off and rejected.  The spouses of molesters can often have their own psychological problems or even their own history of unresolved sexual trauma. Spouses of molesters are often psychologically unable to stand up for themselves and their children. People healing from incest are often concerned about the impact of disclosure on other family members who are unstable.  Healing alone is unfair and people healing from incest often have to cope with family members who may not get better.   People who have been sexually traumatized often have difficulty functioning so getting away by establishing financial independence can be a problem.

For all these reasons, because of all these difficulties in healing from incest, you need to recognize four issues to heal yourself within an incestuous family.

1. You need to put your own healing first.
2. Your need to establish and maintain firm family boundaries.
3. Your need to distance your self from destructive family members.
4. Don’t forget to put your own healing first.

It is lonely to put yourself first.  It is unfair to put yourself first. You have to put yourself first and heal. You are a worthwhile person. You are worth healing. You can be successful and heal.  Don’t forget yourself.

I am a survivor of PTSD and I am a psychotherapist.  This my second post about couples counseling & PTSD.  I am in private practice with my wife and we often do couples counseling together. We’ve been married 35 years and know all about coping with PTSD in a relationship.  Initially sexual contact can often appear to be spontaneous and satisfying.  Both partners desire to please one another and will pretend to ignore the fear responses that relate to unresolved l trauma and PTSD symptoms.  These traumas may or may not have been disclosed in the relationship but they can be sensed as fear responses during intimate contact.  Couples tend to seriously misinterpret fear responses in themselves and in their partner.  These fear responses don’t necessarily have to be related to sex.  People who have experienced trauma can often become triggered by intimacy in general and become afraid when relationships become too safe and feel too close. Often the safer relationships can become intolerable to trauma survivors.

There are 3 basic rules to healing trauma and PTSD in couples:

1. Understanding.
2. Understanding.
3. Understanding.

It is hard to ask for understanding when your trust in relationships has been shattered by sexual trauma.  It is hard to ask for understanding when your partner shuts down and you feel inadequate and blame yourself that your partner has been traumatized and has fear responses.  This trauma cycle between partners shutting down and partners feeling self blame can often spin out of control and break viable loving relationships.

The key to maintaining a relationship long enough to heal from trauma is your ability not to blame yourself.

It is not your fault you are frightened by intimacy – this is a normal response to trauma.

It is not your fault that your partner is frightened by intimacy – this is a normal response to trauma.

These are simple ideas to read and remember but they are very difficult emotional ideas to live by.

We feel pain and we can get angry, sad and frightened.  Sometimes it is easier and safer to shut down and numb pain.  Sometimes it is easier to get angry and blame ourselves and other people. It is hard to accept and understand that pain is part of healing from trauma.

The initial goal in couples counseling is to understand how not to make things worse. By the time your relationship heals there will be enough love to stay together.

My wife and I do a lot of couples counseling. A couple with a couple is a powerful therapy.  My wife and I deal with the same problems as any couple.  It is not easy relating and staying together regardless of what you learn at school or what you do for a living.

Being a couple coping with PTSD is something we know all about since I had PTSD.  I’m better now, but I wasn’t always better and my symptoms totally stressed out our marriage.  We both had to cope with my night terrors and my yelling in my dreams and my fear responses during the day and my fear responses when we were intimate. We both felt guilty, confused and annoyed.  She felt that her love should heal me – and her love certainly helped – but she felt inadequate- like her love was inadequate when I became symptomatic and scared. She was also angry at me for being symptomatic.  I felt much the same way she did.  I felt guilty and inadequate and confused and angry at myself.

I’d start therapy and she’d be optimistic and when therapy didn’t always work out, she would be disappointed and upset and so would I be disappointed, angry and upset.  We would argue.  We both were confused about what we were dealing with.

This goes back to the ‘70’s.  We’ve been together 35 years.  PTSD wasn’t really known back then. Somehow we made it through.

So here are a few  basics  from an ‘expert’.

1. No violence.
2. Recover from addiction.
3. Don’t cheat.
4. Keep trying to get help.
5. If therapy is not successful try again.
6. Do not make matters worse with drama.
7. Do not blame drama on anyone else.
8. Disengage when provoked.
9. Your actions are your responsibility.
10. It is your responsibility to protect yourself.
11. It is your responsibility to heal yourself.
12. You are not responsible for your partner.

These steps are very difficult to live by.  These steps are not fair. These steps help keep things from getting worse.

If you follow these steps, by the time you or your partner heals, you will have a chance to repair your relationship.