1996-2001
The door
May 1996. I am laying in bed with fever and a sore throat, again. Why? Why do I become ill again and again? And why do I recover so slowly? Why do I stay ill for weeks, only to become ill again a few weeks later? Today, I was asked to substitute at a school of music, tomorrow. Could my illness have something to do with that? It could be — teaching is not easy for me. At the conservatory, my internships were a disaster. I was very scared, every time again. I managed to turn the switch in time and function “just normally” every time, and I did do it well, but before and afterwards I always felt horrible. Later I had private pupils, and this worked better, but in these first months of self-help therapy, I have worked as a substitute at a school of music several times, and all these times I fell ill. A throat infection, a fever, “the flu”. Why? What’s the matter with teaching that makes me react so strongly?.
This night, I lay awake and start doing therapy. Which aspect of teaching is the trigger? There are so many things that could be the trigger. To teach, I have to talk, and that is hard for me. I work with this in the therapy, but no matter how much I process around “talking”, I stay ill. I try something else. I do not really want to teach flute. Learning to play the flute seems so futile compared to the problems I am struggling with. I have the feeling I would rather help people with important problems than with something like learning to play the flute, which feels like just a luxury. It brings up a lot, that I am forcing myself to do something that I do not really want, and I work with the four steps, but I stay ill.
I keep on searching. In my imagination I wander through the room where I teach, I see myself teaching. I look very carefully at everything in the room. I try to notice where I feel fear or pain. Nothing seems to trigger strong feelings. Suddenly, I see the door, the door through which a pupil will come, and I feel how scared I am. Why I am so afraid of this door? Then I remember the image of the door of my bedroom when I was a small child. The door that opened in the night, my mortal fear, and I realize I am mixing up those two images.
I sleep in the first room on the right when you come up the stairs. That is my bedroom, from the time that I am 1½ years old until I am 3½ years old.
So small, still, at night in my little bed. The door opens. Fear. I am terrified, I know this. Frozen with fear I lay in my bed, I stop breathing, I hope this way I can work miracles, so it will not happen this time. I hope I can work miracles so he will not come this time. Fear, overwhelming, mortal fear.
But he does come. I want to hide somewhere but there is no place to go. Papa’s hands come towards me, lift me from my bed, his hands around my body, around my waist, I go upwards, powerless. Papa presses me against him, fixates me, holding me tightly with his arm. Down in my body something comes inside me, into my belly, something big. Overwhelming, terrible pain. The only thing I feel is pain. I am torn apart, pain is killing me. Mortal fear. Powerless. I can’t go anywhere. Totally helpless against papa. Papa is so big, so strong. I am no match for him. Papa is always there, always everywhere. And I need papa. Small child, need papa.
Why does this happen? Why do you come, papa? Why do you do this, papa? Papa, papa, I don’t understand. It can not be papa who does this. It can’t be. It shouldn’t be. Papa didn’t do this. Papa needs to be nice and safe, otherwise I can’t live. It isn’t papa. Papa is not guilty. The door did this. The door brought papa in. The door is guilty of all this.
But actually you were guilty, papa. Papa, you shouldn’t have done this, you were wrong to do this, you weren’t allowed to do this. You hurt me. I should have been safe.
Now, now that I see I made the door guilty, now for the first time I can see my father was responsible for what he did. My sore throat improves immediately, and the fever recedes.
Although this is not my only problem with teaching, this is what made me ill. This night, now that I see this and process it with the four steps, my sore throat improves immediately. I am not ill anymore. For the first time I can see my father as guilty. Before, I always said this in the therapy, but I couldn’t feel it. Now I can feel this and put the responsibility where it belongs. Finally I can see the reality of what happened and process it, as far as this is possible in one time. For the first time, I am not ill when I teach at a school of music — and it stays that way. For the first time, I have won a victory over being always ill. “Doors” are not the only trigger, and I will have to go a long way to discover the other ones, but the first victory is there, and that’s really important to me.
Symptoms that get worse
With one of my other symptoms, I win less and less victories: sleeping without a break. More often than not, I fail to find the cause of my sleeping problem, and I get really tired from waking up so often during the night. Also, I am very scared and desperate at night, and I have more and more trouble with a symptom that I didn’t have in the past: painful and frightening convulsions of my body. When the summer of 1996 comes, I sleep far worse than when I started therapy, late in 1995. This is a big disappointment, I had expected I would sleep better and better. It is clear that in this situation I lack the energy to start studying, and I postpone my plans to somewhere after the summer. Then surely I will be fine.
But it gets even worse. At the beginning of the summer, I don’t fall asleep anymore, either. I now almost don’t sleep at all and it’s not getting any better. Only during a week with friends in Sweden, I sleep better, but when I get home again this stops. Every night I lay awake the whole night. Every time when I about to doze off I wake up with a start. The few moments that I sleep, I have nightmares. My eyes and my head hurt because I am so tired, I am exhausted and desperate, and far too tired to do therapy. But I do realize that I can only solve this problem by doing therapy, so I try. I don’t have any idea where to look for the cause. Before or after my holiday? In Sweden, I slept better, and when I got home I also slept well for one night. I just don’t know, I try very carefully to look at everything that happened, before as well as after the holiday. I process a lot that is very useful, but it doesn’t bring me any sleep. I often think I will never sleep again, and will die from exhaustion.
I struggle with the fear of dying or of being killed. I wonder why. Often I hear a phrase in my head: “If you talk about it, I will kill you.” A threat by my father. I try to process my fear of being killed with my memory of this threat, but it doesn’t work. I still have horrible nights, I still get almost no sleep at all, I still have a lot of physical pain, I am terrified and think I will be killed.
I wonder whether the pain in my legs and my feelings of dying have something to do with falling from the emergency staircase, in the apartment building where we lived when I was two years old. When I was a child, I was often told that I fell from that staircase, and that my mother found me hanging upside down, with my feet stuck between the steps of the stairs. When I heard that story, I always imagined myself falling face down. But in my dreams, I always fall backwards — the metal stairs, falling backwards, mortal fear, thinking I am going to die or have died. I ask my mother, and it turns out my dreams are right: I fell backwards. In the therapy I try to connect my mortal fear and the pain in my legs with this event. But it doesn’t work, this is not the right connection. The pain and the fear are about something else. But I don’t know what.
During this summer I also have trouble with the “movie” in my head. Bizarre, violent images of my fantasy world. Images of being tied up. Images of being hurt. Punishment. Having to become better. Having to learn to obey. Torture. Having to learn to endure pain. I try to process this in the therapy but I find it very hard. Sometimes I manage to pick some aspects that I can acknowledge as true — the images of sexual abuse. Sometimes I can at least acknowledge some feelings, and process these feelings. But often, I am unable to find a way out of these feelings in the therapy, and I become totally confused. Chaotic feelings and the notion that what happens is good, as the man in the “movie” is telling me, and which I myself feel strongly, too. My mind says that this is not true, and that it is horrible what happens, but my mind seems to be totally turned off as soon as I get into these images. I am overwhelmed by these feelings, I vanish in them. I feel fascinated, pulled towards them, fear, a lot of fear, excitement, lust, not being able to break away from the images, not being able to stop them. I feel ashamed of these fantasies. I feel ashamed of my fantasies of sex and violence. I feel ashamed of my fascination for sex and sadism. But the images force themselves upon me, irresistibly, and I feel a strong longing to go with them, and the only thing I can feel is that the pain and the fear are good and nice. Here, the therapy is powerless.
I continue to have nightmares, in the rare moments when I sleep. My nightmares become even more scary and awful.
I am trying to hit my father, in a desperate attempt to reach him. Then he ties me up and punishes me with electric shocks. I have a lot of pain and feel very scared and humiliated. I wake up and can’t sleep anymore, I remain panicky since I think the door is opening and my father is standing next to my bed.
—
A nightmare about being Jewish, Nazis, being chased, living in a ghetto, not having enough to eat, afraid to be killed. A weird scene — I walk through a room, there are many people gathered in that room, all are afraid. There is a man sitting at his desk. He is going to pick out someone, and no one dares to breathe and everyone hopes he or she will not be the one. I walk to the toilet and I hope I do it unnoticed, I hope I will not attract attention. But suddenly I feel a horrible electric shock that goes through my whole body from my head to my feet. I feel burns on my heels but I have to go on normally, I have to go to the man, he picked me out. It hurts terribly.
—
I am in my class in high school. I cry, since I feel and see a memory of being two years old. I am sleeping. Papa comes in, I am still asleep. His hands goes into my panties. In my memory, I wake up because of the pain, pain down there, pain inside. Pain, fear, powerlessness. In my dream, I am crying because of this memory, and I leave the class. A classmate comes after me, tries to soothe me but that only makes it worse. He can’t handle it, I have to reassure him, stop crying and be there for him. I have to act. I know and feel that crying is good, that I am mourning. But when he is there, this is not possible.
—
I dream that I am being punished. I am in some kind of reformatory and need punishment. A man (my father?) takes me to the room where this will take place. He puts a stick into my vagina. It hurts and it moves all the time and so it hurts even more. I have to sit there enduring this the whole duration of my punishment. I am in pain, I feel sad and scared and powerless.
Summer is ending, and I hang back from resuming my normal activities. No matter how few they are, it is more than I can manage, now that I get so very little sleep. What could have happened at the start of summer that made me so sleepless? What has been triggered? What have I overlooked in the therapy? Doing therapy doesn’t bring any change at all. Nevertheless I continue therapy, I don’t give up. Although it doesn’t bring me sleep at the moment, I keep telling myself that the memories I do process will help me in the end.
One day at the end of August, I lay exhausted on my couch. I try to look carefully at the worst nights of the past few weeks. I try to see what happened in the days that preceded them. Suddenly I realize that all this started with one memory that I processed in the therapy. This memory I processed on the same day that I started sleeping badly, in early July. And one week ago I listened to the recording of this session, and afterwards I had some really horrible nights. Every time that I remember this memory, I feel severe pain in my heart region — I even worry about having a heart attack. A piercing pain in my chest and in my left arm.
Until now, the cause of insomnia was never in something I did in a session. So in these two months when I was desperately looking for the cause of my insomnia, I had processed everything I could think of, but I had never looked at what I did in the session on the day when my sleeping problems started.
It is a memory of my father. I am six years old and I am in first grade at school. I like school, and I learn easily. I don’t really do my best, I just enjoy learning. I don’t even know what marks are and what they mean. The record card that I get from school just before Christmas isn’t important to me. That is — until my father looks at it and says “Just ‘writing’ should be better.” There’s a B for writing on my card, and all other marks are straight A’s.
I never saw this as a dramatic event. I always remembered it, but I never remembered having any feelings about it. I did indeed start doing my best to write nicely after my father told me this. I even started doing my utmost to write nicely when, in third grade, I get a teacher who is extremely fussy about writing nicely. But I see no reason why I can’t sleep anymore because of this memory.
I don’t understand why, every time I encounter this memory of my father’s reaction to my school record card, I react with mortal fear and extreme physical symptoms. When I process this memory more carefully, I notice that I have always thought that my father was right, that I wasn’t good enough and that I had no right to exist with only a B on my record card. Also, I always thought that there wasn’t any other reaction possible than what my father did. With a lot of difficulty, I find out in the therapy that I am not worthless and that I do have the right to exist with a B for writing, and that there are other ways to react to a record card than to say what should be better. Finding out this in therapy is an intense relief and release.
Therefore, I expect to sleep well the night after this therapy session, a pattern I know from other times when I processed a memory that caused sleeping problems. But it doesn’t happen. Instead, I have an extremely horrible night. I don’t sleep, I am desperate and terrified and my only thoughts are: “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die…” I experience severe pain in my chest and pain in my vagina. Nevertheless I am sure I picked the right memory. This memory clearly is the leading thread running through my sleeping problems of the past months, and yet processing this memory doesn’t help me. Why doesn’t the therapy work this time? Why does it make things even worse? I don’t understand anything of it.
A few days later, I become upset because of financial problems with social services. My application for repayment of the costs of the therapy I did before, has been rejected. I feel overwhelmingly powerless. Pain and rage about the injustice of all this, and mortal fear. Why did social services do this? They acted this way because I made a mistake in the application procedure, I think. The idea that I did something wrong that has led to dismissal of my application, the idea that it’s all my own fault, strengthens my panic and fear. The many “daily” mistakes I make no longer lead to strong reactions, but “big” ones do. I use the four steps the whole day, trying not to drown in my strong feelings.
My reaction to this kind of trouble is familiar. I know these triggers all too well. In the past, they have led several times to an overdose of pills. My reaction is just as strong as it was then, the feelings just as unbearable as they were in those crises. But Stettbacher’s therapy enables me to handle the situation differently this time. Although it doesn’t feel like it, I can see that my feelings are old and do not belong to the present situation. The situation isn’t bad enough to reasonably be the cause of this strong reaction.
Consistently I use the four steps and try to find out what part of my past has been triggered. I say what I feel and think, I say everything what I can identify of the chaotic feelings and thoughts inside me, of the hurricane that rages inside me:
“I am so scared. I feel so powerless. It hurts so much, not getting money. I can’t live this way. I need money to live. I want to live. It is not fair that I don’t get this money. I feel so powerless. I didn’t deserve to be treated this way. Why don’t I get the money I need to live? Why don’t I have the right to live? Why are you allowed to live but I’m not? There was a good reason for my therapy. My therapy wasn’t just luxury, I really needed it. I was really doing very badly. I needed help. It isn’t fair that this causes financial problems for me, too. I really would have wanted to be healthy and to be able to work, I wish I had enough money to pay for therapy myself. But I am not healthy and I don’t have the money. I can’t help being ill, I can’t help that I need therapy. I can’t help being without money. I would rather be healthy, but I am not. I don’t want to be dependent on social services, I hate to be dependent but I have no choice. I need your help. Why don’t you help me? I feel so powerless. I need that money. It is just fair for me to get it, even though I did something wrong in the application procedure. I am so scared. I didn’t want to make a mistake, but I did. I am so terribly scared. Please, help me. You have all the power and I don’t have any. You are much stronger than me. You shouldn’t reject me just because of one mistake. I have the right to make mistakes. It’s not true that I am not allowed to make mistakes. I am so scared. Please, help me to stay alive. I want to live. I don’t want to die. You are not allowed to kill me. I am so scared. I feel so powerless. I can’t escape. But I am allowed to make mistakes. I do have the right to live, even if I make a mistake. It isn’t true that you are allowed to kill me. I am so scared, I don’t want to die, please don’t kill me, I am so scared, let me live, daddy, I want to live, I am so scared, I want to live…”
I try to acknowledge my feelings, thoughts and needs to be old, to be memories and not part of the current situation. I try to direct my words to the past. That’s hard, but I realize that this is the only thing that can help me get through all this. I try to find out what part of the past is being triggered, but I can’t find it. Nevertheless, after some hours, I do see the present situation more clearly and I can see better how to handle it, so that I may get what I think I deserve, in spite of maybe having done something wrong.
One thing I do conclude from this event, from the intense feelings I have this day, and I write in my diary: “The past is more horrible than I ever thought possible.”
Surprisingly, I suddenly sleep better after this day. Although I didn’t find the memory behind all those feelings, the things I said in the therapy this day, directed at the past, were apparently right. I hope that sleeping well will continue now and will improve, like I always hope and expect when I am sleeping better. Then sleeping well feels so natural, I just can’t imagine that this will vanish again. This is something I can do. Of course this will stay. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. After a week, I sleep just as badly as I did during summer. And again I have no idea what caused it, or even what triggered it. It is clear that I need all my energy and attention for doing therapy. Disappointed, I put off my plans for studying. The few activities that I have are more than enough for me: concerts, volunteer work at a day-nursery, the normal household obligations, and social contacts. Now and then I have a night when I sleep better, but most of the time I sleep very little. I am tired, and sometimes ill.
Talking
At the end of September, I realize my nights are worst, with strong fear and physical pain, after I talked with someone during the day. I mean really talked, not small talk. During the summer it became easier for me to talk, something which always had been a big problem for me. In September I notice that I, for example, can say far more easily that I disagree, which is really new for me. I can talk, I can react, it feels sensational and at the same time natural. But afterwards, I can’t sleep and I’m very scared.
I look for memories that fit in. I think of the prohibition of my father to talk, but I can’t process that memory. It feels very far away and I don’t get any improvement when I use it in the therapy. I feel unreal when I take a look at it, and so I stop paying attention to the memory. Next, I think of the memory of not being allowed to talk in class, the time I had a black out at school. But this connection I can’t process either.
Most negative memories concerning talking are about my mother, and those memories are very real to me. She often reacted negatively when I told her something. When I said I felt ill or had pain, she told me it was just nothing, she told me other people had it far worse than me, and she told me I was a bad, selfish child to ask for attention. When I was enthusiastic about something and wanted to show it to my friend, my mother got angry, too, telling me that I was selfish and wanted too much attention. I just had to pay attention to what my friend said or liked, not ask attention for myself. And when I said “no” to something my mother wanted, she reacted disapproving and hostile, or disappointed and sad, and she asked me why I did this to her. It seems logical that this taught me not to tell anything about myself, and not to show my feelings. I now try to process these memories and stand up for my right to tell about myself and to have my own opinions, preferences and needs.
In the meantime, I have problems with the present contact with my mother, too. She is driving me insane by calling me every week, and then talking small talk for an hour or more — about her problems or about her neighbors, the friend of a friend of her neighbors and so on — whereas I don’t tell anything myself. I can’t stand anymore that she tells me she needs me, needs to hear my voice but never asks me anything, doesn’t want to know how I am doing. I can’t stand anymore that we never talk about things that are important to me, but I still have to listen to her with empathy and attention. I can’t stand it anymore that I don’t tell anything myself.
For about a month, I don’t answer the telephone anymore, for fear that it will be her. I can’t bear talking to her and I don’t dare to tell her this. She leaves messages on my answering machine, her messages become more and more angry about me not answering the phone and not calling her back. But I need time to find out how to handle this situation, and to process my memories. I realize that I always thought that enduring her on the telephone was adult behavior. But actually, it wasn’t. This is my childhood pattern. At the same time, I realize that getting mad at her and not wanting to speak with her also is based on my childhood feelings.
In a few weeks’ time I try to process as many of my memories as possible. I try to improve so much that I can look at the situation from an adult point of view and act in an adult way. After some weeks, I feel strong and adult enough and I call her, in October. I tell her this has to stop. I tell her I do want contact with her, but not as often as she apparently wants, and I tell her that I don’t like the way we talk with each other. I tell her I feel she doesn’t pay any attention to me and to how I am doing, and that our telephone calls don’t feel good this way.
We talk a long time. My mother reacts very negatively and at some moments she’s just rude. Which makes it clear to me that my memories are not exaggerated. When I start telling her about how I am doing (something I before never did), she reacts immediately: “Shall we end our phone call now?” She doesn’t want to hear anything from me and she isn’t able to show any interest in me or to show any empathy. We don’t agree, nor do we understand each other. Finally, I say that I know I can’t expect her to change, but that I certainly will change. I tell her that in the future I will tell her when I’m not in the mood to talk with her on the phone. I tell her that it is important for me to take care of myself. Afterwards, I feel relieved, and I can answer the phone again. Some time later, we talk again about all this, and this time it fares better. For some time, I sleep somewhat better, but still worse than a year ago.
Processing my memories of my mother about “talking” gradually makes it easier for me to talk, I am less scared. But the extreme reaction afterwards stays the same, and I sleep worse and worse — not falling asleep, not sleeping on, fear, despair, physical pain, and nightmares.
Headache
In November 1996, I win a victory again in my battle against falling ill. One night I wake up with a swollen, sore throat. I know that this normally means I will be ill for the next couple of weeks. I decide to start doing therapy immediately, instead of trying to fall asleep again, although I haven’t gotten much sleep yet and I have to work at the day-nursery the next morning.
Maybe my illness has to do with my visit to a friend, that afternoon — the last time I saw her I also became ill the night afterwards. Then I couldn’t find what had caused this and I had been ill for three weeks. I try to notice what touched me and what could be the connection with my past. I see all kinds of connections and process them. My throat doesn’t become worse but neither does it improve, like that one time in June. I don’t feel I have found the cause.
The next morning I decide to go to the day-nursery. I don’t feel well, but not too bad either. At the end of the morning my throat starts to hurt more and more. As I am working with the children, I think about the therapy sessions last night, and suddenly I ‘m beginning to see the light. A memory comes up, a memory of my mother, and I feel strongly that this is what causes my sore throat. The friend I visited yesterday suffers from frequent, severe headaches and this time, as well as the last time, she has told me about it. That brought up a memory.
Somewhere during my high school years. I tell my mother I often have a very bad headache. It never continues for a long time, but it hurts a lot and feels frightening. A painful, cutting headache, especially early in the morning. My mother says that in the past she had terrible headaches and she describes how it felt. She asks if I feel the same as she felt. No, mine is different. “Well, be glad you don’t feel what I felt, that was really terrible”, she says — and that is the only thing she says about it. She doesn’t pay any attention to me, she doesn’t ask me about it anymore and walks away. I stay alone with the pain — pain and loneliness even more now that I am left alone with my pain, while I did have to pay attention to her pain. I think I am not allowed to ask for help again. My conclusion is that I have to think my headache is not bad.
Mama, why don’t you pay attention to my pain? Why do you think only about yourself? Why do I have to be there for you? Why don’t you help me? Am I not important for you? Don’t you want my headache to be cured? Aren’t you interested in how I feel? How is that possible, mama, you are my mom, aren’t you? So then you have to help me, isn’t it? I don’t have another mama, I only have you and you have to help me. You should listen to me, take me seriously and go the doctor with me. Mama, why don’t you do that? I need a mama who takes care of me. My headache is serious, mama, and I need your care.
My throat stops hurting, I don’t become ill.
The movie
There is another cause for bad nights: I notice that my nights are worst when I’ve read about incest during the day, or when I’ve seen something on TV — about incest or murder or danger of being killed. Now that I see this pattern, I pay more attention to processing my memories of my father and of sexual abuse.
At the beginning of December 1996 I realize that my fear after having talked actually does belong to my father’s threat. I can clearly feel the fear when I am talking, I tremble with fear, and I feel that I am afraid of my father, afraid because I go against his prohibition, scared that he will kill me now. I am not only scared when the subject is abuse — I almost never talk about that. Just speaking, whatever it is about, feels dangerous. Now that I feel the connection with my father’s threat, I can process it with the four steps.
When I process this fear in the therapy, I notice that the fear is connected with the attic, the place where I slept when I was between 3½ and 5½ years old. But I don’t have any memories of abuse in the attic. I only have memories of the two years before that, in the other room where I slept when I was younger. When I processed abuse in the therapy, I always felt it belonged to that room. So what happened in the attic? Why don’t I have any memories of that, whereas I do have memories of the earlier period? That doesn’t seem logical. I feel that my father’s threat that he would kill me if I “talked about it” is not about the sexual abuse that I have memories of. He told me this another time, on another occasion. What was it that I wasn’t allowed to talk about? What makes me so afraid? I have no idea.
The financial problem that made me so upset in September, rears its head again in December. Documents are sent to me, there will be a hearing about it. I contact the counselor who is helping me with this. The case is somewhat different than I thought myself, when I thought I made a “mistake”. Still, it brings up strong feelings again. I hate it that this problem is bothering me again. I just realized my father’s threat and all the feelings this brings up, my daily life is already too much for me, I am exhausted and over-stressed. I can’t handle this. It is not fair. But it is there, I have no choice, and the only thing I can dois to acknowledge my reactions as memories, try to get clarity about what is going on, and to process the memories.
Immediately when I get the documents I get very scared, and nauseous. When I am cycling, I am afraid I will faint again, as happened a month before when I was cycling in the street. Next, I feel overwhelmed by strong feelings of despondency, hopelessness and powerlessness. The feeling that I will always lose and that it’s no use to resist. I feel an urge to “go to the colors”. The nights and days that follow are hard. Fear and pain, pain in my chest and pain in my vagina and vehement convulsions of my body. The frightening feeling of having a dead body, which is much worse than I had before. It feels like my body is swollen, taking up more space than before. And at the same time it feels like being empty, dead. My body seems extended, my boundaries shifted, but at the same time more vague, without boundaries, without a body. At some moments my body seems to have fallen apart in a thousand bubbles which are spread through the whole room. It feels horrible. I have no idea what is happening with me, or to which events all these feelings and symptoms are connected, and I can’t do anything against it.
One sleepless night, as I lay with this horrible, swollen, dead feeling in my body and pain from below, I try once again to find out what is going on. I try several connections that don’t bring me sleep. I continue. Feeling my body as it feels now, one thing I realize very clearly: Something terrible happened to me — I don’t know what, but it was terrible. This phrase is haunting me: “Something terrible happened to me.”
Next thing, my “other world” starts, the movie in my head forces itself upon me. I try to process the feelings of this movie, like I always do when it happens. But suddenly I don’t look just at the feelings that I experience in this movie, I look at the contents of the movie, too. And then I find myself thinking of abuse with wires and electric shocks. Suddenly, I see this as abuse that really happened — the “movie” that has been with me since I was a child, my dreams about “my other world”, the painful convulsions of my body that go on and on. All this points to abuse that has actually happened this way. I blame myself for thinking that this could be real, but at the same time I feel relief. Very carefully, I start doing therapy with this. But when I step out of my bed in the morning, I feel this is too hard to believe. The morning sunshine tells me this can’t be true. I end up with: let’s stick to the conclusion that something terrible has been done to me, I don’t know what, but it was terrible and somewhere around here I should look for it.
I also think of what my father told to the reverend in the last months of his life: that he had done terrible things. The same words I’m using now. I also think of the copy of For Your Own Good by Alice Miller that I lent to my mother ten years earlier, in an attempt to explain to her how I felt, and that somehow vanished into thin air — my mother said she couldn’t find it anywhere. She thought my father had thrown it away, but why? I now suspect that my father saw it, read a part of it, felt confronted with what he did (since Miller writes about severe abuse of children), and therefore made it disappear. Now that I am starting to look at my “other world” as being real memories, I start to understand why he did this.
The next day is the day of the hearing. It is a hard day. The confrontation with the financial problems and with social services is painful. I am very scared and I am crying silently, I feel very small and inaudibly I say over and over: “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me…” The next night is horrible. I cry for hours and hours and hours. Why? In the therapy I look at all the things that happened in the hearing and at the way I felt then, but this doesn’t help me. I try another way of doing the therapy, I try to take note of what my feelings and my body are telling me.
I notice the tension that comes up because my alarm-clock will ring while I’m still asleep and don’t want to wake up, not having had enough sleep yet. Having to rise in the morning — I can’t, I can’t. Powerlessness. Extreme fear. Being at the mercy of… Being no match for… Having to… Fear. Panic. Tension. Can’t survive. Can’t survive. Dying. Don’t want to die. Having no chance. No help. No chance. It just happens. Can’t escape. Being at the mercy of a madman.
Then, the “movie” in my head starts again.
The man says: “take off your clothes.” awful.
I don’t want don’t want don’t want.
“If you don’t do it, I must punish you more”, the man says.
He says I have to lay down on the bed.
Terrified. Can’t escape. He is stronger. Have to obey, go to the bed.
Hurts inside.
Have to have to.
Man ties me up. At my wrists, at my ankles.
Child powerless, powerless, terrified, humiliated, betrayed.
Man puts electric wire in me, on me.
Shocks through my body. Electric shocks.
Pain, killing pain.
Don’t do don’t do, stop.
Not allowed to make a sound.
Hold on silently. Hold on till it’s over.
But can’t can’t can’t can’t stand anymore. Hurts so much. Can’t hold on.
Stop please Stop Can’t No more Hurts so much.
Goes on and on. Can’t No more.
“If you talk about it, I’ll kill you.”
The man says, all this is to make me better. I have to do it right. If I am not silent, I must get more pain. Until I learn.
It’s a secret, I am not allowed to talk about it. But all children get this. It has to be done.
This night, experiencing this movie again and again, I fight in the therapy to disapprove of what happens in my “other world”. To me, it seems so normal to take for granted what happens, to take for granted what the man says, to think it is necessary, to see it as something a child needs in order to get better, as deserved punishment for a bad child, a necessary treatment to become good. It seems legitimate punishment for a child’s mistakes, I believe everything of what has to be done to children to become better. Now I’m fighting against these insane ideas.
Then I get physical memories again. Convulsions in my belly. Extreme fear, pain, bewilderment. Again I realize: something horrible must have happened. A madman did something horrible to me.
After struggling for many hours, I end up with the same conclusion as the night before: what happens in this movie in my head, really has been done to me. By my own father, at home, in the attic. My father tied me up and gave me electric shocks. I cry and cry and cry. The inconceivable has really happened. This time, I don’t conceal this conclusion anymore when I get out of bed in the morning.
I do go to the day-nursery the next morning, even though I have only slept for half an hour and had a frightening, strenuous night. Under the circumstances, I function very well. I do feel amazed by the totally different world I am in now, and therefore it seems unreal what I went through last night. But somewhere, I still realize it is true. And I see around me children of the same age I was when this happened to me — and I am even more amazed. It is totally incomprehensible what my father did to me. Really inconceivably horrible. Small children, dependent, vulnerable, powerless. Beautiful, living people. Valuable creatures.
That night I sleep well, for the first time in a long while. The next few days I feel I am finally on my way to solving the puzzle. I feel I finally understand where all those severe symptoms come from. I feel finally I understand what my fathers prohibition to “talk about it” was referring to. Finally I understand what caused my sleeping problems, what those painful convulsions of my body were, why I had pain in my chest, near my heart, why I had such pain in my belly, why I felt so nauseous, why I fainted. Why I got so much trouble with even the slightest physical strain, why I was always so exhausted, why I was so often ill and feverish. Why my father never stopped telling me that “people can’t remember events that happened before they were six years old” — which isn’t true since I do remember a lot from years at kindergarten, but which was apparently very important to him to tell me again and again, for twenty years. Why he told me that “people can’t remember pain”. Now I understand why my father told the reverend that he was very guilty. Indeed he was…
I also remember that a couple of years ago, I already started thinking that this abuse had really happened, that what happens in the movie in my head and in my dreams, abuse with electricity, was real. I then told this to Robert, my therapist — and he immediately talked me out of it. This was nonsense, this wasn’t possible, these images were fantasies, symbolic fantasies. I locked up my thoughts again and went back to believing the “movie” in my head to be fantasies, sinister fantasies, symbolic for other abuse, like I used to think. But somewhere there still was the awareness that something didn’t fit. Now I am surprised that it took me so long to end up with the same conclusion.
Who will believe me?
I am having hard times, now that I did acknowledge those images as memories. I have severe pain, pain in my whole body, pain in my heart region, cutting pain in my vagina, pain in my belly, nausea, and a feeling as if I’m going to faint (which doesn’t happen). Sometimes my skin is glowing, it feels hot and red, although I am not ill and don’t have a fever. My body feels raw, damaged. Crying hurts since it makes my belly move. My right wrist hurts and I can’t use it. And I am so scared, so terribly scared.
Nevertheless, I keep my head above water. I have enough experience with the four steps to handle this. I almost automatically use the steps and do this almost continuously, during the day as well as in my nightmares. I sleep much better than I did before I acknowledged these memories. I function quite normally. I feel miserable and cry a lot, but apart from this I can do my normal daily activities. At the beginning of January I have to work a couple of days with the orchestra and I succeed in doing this without problems.
But I feel very fragile. Going by bus causes nausea, and triggers my fear and pain, and I am crying when I arrive. The physical strain of skating makes me sick, exhausted and desperate, even more than am I used to. A warm Jacuzzi feels like being tortured, and just taking a bath starts reliving of memories, too.
I feel such a strong need to go to people who understand what it is I’m going through. The past is so inconceivably horrible and it hurts so much. It hurts so much. I feel a need for support, for help. But there is none. I think about looking for help, looking for a therapist, but I remember all too well what I experienced with therapists before, and I realize I would endanger myself if I really tried to get help. I can’t take the risk that a therapist would deny my memories. I decide to see this need as a childhood need, since then I can handle it. An urgent need for safety — but I am safe now.
If only I could talk about it, if I wouldn’t be totally alone with this, if I could tell friends about my memories, that would make such a difference. I feel a strong need to tell, but I don’t dare to. Now! I think during a talk. Now I’m going to tell about it — but then I don’t do it, and the next time I don’t tell it either. I tell some people that awful memories came up, but I don’t tell what happens in these memories. It is too painful to talk about, I can’t get the words out of my mouth. And my story is too bizarre. “No one will believe you”, is a phrase that haunts me. Also, I have learned iover the years that when I tell about my problems, people sometimes react in a way that hurts me. Sometimes I wished I hadn’t said anything, although people meant well.
Christmas 1996, and it happens again. I try to explain to my brother-in-law why I am crying so much, I want to tell him what I went through the past week, what I saw and felt and what happened to me as a child. But before I really start telling, I stop because of his well-meaning but negative reaction to my crying. A friendly: “Just calm down” instead of saying: “Cry, it is OK, just cry as long as you need, talk and cry, I will stay with you”, which I need so much. The question I long for: “Do you want to tell what happened”, doesn’t come. I don’t tell anything. And I lose my feelings. I feel empty and desperate. I lose contact with myself, feel cut off from myself, from my feelings and from my history.
After this, I don’t dare to try to tell anyone else anymore. But in January I do write letters to my friends in Sweden with whom I stayed in the summer. I write how I did since the summer vacation, and what I found out about my history. Writing is easier for me than talking, and that these friends are living far away makes it safer, too. Besides, they are both very good friends whom I already told a lot about myself. From one of them I get a supportive and understanding letter back. I don’t hear from the other.
I make an appointment with a doctor because I want to be sure that my physical symptoms (especially the pain in my chest and my arm) are caused by memories and there isn’t a present physical cause for them. Therefore, I have to tell about my memories. But I can’t. I just can’t get the words out of my mouth and I start crying. Since I expected this, at home I wrote something about it and I let her read it. It is not my own doctor but a substitute, a female doctor. She reacts friendly, but it is not clear to me whether she believes me or not, and I notice that this feels important to me. But I don’t dare to ask. Anyway, there isn’t a physical cause.
Real, unreal
After the visit to my brother-in-law with Christmas, when I unsuccessfully tried to talk, my memories of my “other world” feel unreal. And not only my memories, everything feels unreal — myself, the world around me. I feel empty and far away, as if it’s not true what I remember, as if I’ve been cut off from myself. As if I am not the one who went through all this. As if I do not live anymore. I still do have the awkward physical symptoms, the painful convulsions, going on for hours. Sometimes I feel pain in my whole body, I feel like my body has been shattered inside, a crushed mess, everything torn apart, all pieces painfully torn, no boundaries anymore. A horrible feeling. No body anymore, just a trembling, painful pap. I can’t sleep anymore.
I remember I did sleep and I did feel alive when I believed my memories. When my memories felt real, I felt real myself, too, and I felt the world to be real, too. Therefore, in the therapy I try to convince myself that what I remember and what my body tells me really happened. But this doesn’t work, I don’t manage, no matter how hard I try.
Then I decide to pursue another strategy. I acknowledge that these experiences are so horrible that I can’t reasonably imagine that someone really did this. It is indeed inconceivable what happened, it is unbelievable what my father did. It is natural that I can’t believe this. This shouldn’t have happened — and since it did happen, it is only natural that I have these feelings of not understanding, not believing and of unreality. It is really weird that I went through all this, since this has nothing to do with who I am, who I really am, since this never should have happened anyhow, and it isn’t how my life should have been. I didn’t deserve it, I didn’t cause it.
And then the feelings change. They change into deeply felt, intense feelings of being ME. I now feel strongly that it wasn’t my fault what happened, that it didn’t have anything to do with me, that this shouldn’t have happened. These are intense, but also very quiet feelings of mourning. Mourning that gives me back my life, mourning that gives me a past and a present, that puts me in touch with myself, and gives me a present that is different from the past. Suddenly I sleep much better.
Having felt this, the subject of “believing what happened” isn’t over yet. Over the course of months I struggle with it again and again. Which part of my “other world” is fantasy and which part has really happened? What I can believe one day, I may question the next day. Is it out of fear that I sometimes decide that something can’t have really happened, or is this a valid conclusion? I realize that I will have to find out for myself again and again what I think of my story, what I believe from this part of my history. I realize that this will be an ongoing process of sorting out, of changing opinions, of examining my thoughts and feelings. Again and again ascertain a view that I can believe on that moment, that I feel to be possible, probable, convincing. Again and again defining a version of my history as I believe it to be true at that moment, that I find plausible, convincing. I realize that this is a process that will probably never be really finished, although I also expect, guess and notice that it will gradually come to rest. I expect that, step by step, I will arrive at a version of my history that I feel to be true most of the time, as far as I can access the truth.
For several nights I have a lot of pain in my arm. During the day I don’t have any problem with my arm, but as soon as I lay in bed I have severe pain. I wonder what is wrong. I didn’t do anything special with my arm during the day, and I didn’t lay on my arm in bed. It really hurts, especially moving it upwards is impossible. Pain in my whole arm up to my shoulder. The first night the pain is worst in my elbow, the second night it is worst at my shoulder. As if my arm has been torn from my shoulder. It hurts so much, a lame wing that hangs from my body, apart from me.
It makes me think of a part of my “other world”. The part where the child, me, doesn’t want to obey and throws herself on the floor, resisting, refusing to go to the bed. And the man, my father, pulls the child along by her arm. The girl fights back, but she doesn’t have a chance, being only four years old, up against an adult man. Is that the pain in my arm that I feel now? The pain of being pulled along harshly? I am not sure, but since I have to do something with it, I have to do something against this pain, I use this as starting point for the therapy in those nights. After the second night, the pain lingers on during the day, and then it vanishes. I am not sure if my guess has been correct, and I decide that I will check again if the symptom returns. But it doesn’t return.
There are more things I don’t understand. In a nightmare about the abuse, that quite literally tells my childhood memories, I struggle with something in my mouth. This is not part of the “movie”. I remember my strong reactions to innocent daily events with my mouth — a toddler who puts cookie crumbs into my mouth, a toddler giving me a kiss on my mouth, bringing up mortal fear. I have strong physical feelings of wanting something to go out of my mouth, retching, vomiting. And I sleep with my jaws clenched, so tight that I constantly have aching jaws — one time I even break a molar. I don’t know what this is, but it brings me horrible nights with flashes of lightning and my body convulsing. I want to know what all this is about. I add the images, my nightmares and my feelings and then I guess most probably my father put a handkerchief in my mouth. But it is no more than a reconstruction. I do not really know.
The movie does tell about having to be silent. Having to endure everything soundless, no matter how much it hurts. I do everything I can to be silent. I can’t escape, I can’t do anything to help myself, I have to obey, I mustn’t make a sound. If I do make a sound, when I can’t stand it anymore, when I resist — then I do have to get extra, in order to learn. It is important not to make a sound. But at the other hand — if I co-operate and manage to endure it, then I am ready for getting more and he will give me more. There is no way out. Whatever I do, I can’t help myself.
Sometimes, dreams give me a sense of reality, give me the feelings that help me to do the therapy, to process what happened to me.
I dream that I am in the house that my parents moved to when I started my studies. In my dream my mother is there, and my sisters, too. I lay in the garden on a blanket in the sun. Suddenly I see my father coming. In my dream I am aware that this is a hallucination, since my father is dead already, so this can’t be true. Nevertheless I cry, terrified because of this realistic image of my father approaching. But no one reacts to my cries, not my mother, not my sisters. My awareness that this is a hallucination or a dream becomes less, the experience start to feel more real, it feels as if things are happening now. Suddenly I’m laying not on a blanket but on a bed, and my father is standing next to me. He has some things with him, a blue-gray metal box. I am really scared of that, I know that this is the thing with which he used to hurt me in the past. He puts a metal clamp on my head and somehow he fastens it to the bed, I can’t move anymore, it is really tightened and it hurts so bad that I can hardly stand it. I know that he will now take the wires and put them on my head and send flashes of lightning through my head, and that this pain is too horrible. I already have so much pain and I am so scared. I try to stay in the dream as long as I can, to hold on, but then I no longer can. I leave and the dream stops.
After this dream I cry and cry. I am aware that the details of this dream probably aren’t correct, but the essence and my feelings about it are spot on. It is incomprehensible. Inconceivable. And reality at the same time. So insane. How could my father do this? I can’t imagine. I don’t understand. He took delight in the pain and fear of a child. His own child. It is so inconceivable that I start to think it can’t have really happened. How could this happen to me, to me, whereas I am Janet and needed to live, needed to be safe, to be complete. Crying, crying. My tears won’t stop anymore. But they are good tears, it helps to cry, these tears bring relief. My tears help me to acknowledge reality, they help me to live on now.
Now that my memories feel real again, I feel horrified and I feel betrayed. Especially about all those years afterwards when I lived in my father’s house, and I tried so hard to live with him. Again and again I tried to find or create something positive in the contact with him, always giving him another chance. I always felt guilty about hating him, I always thought it was my fault. Children shouldn’t hate their father, isn’t it? I feel horrified about all those times he touched me, the times I sat in my father’s lap, the times I kissed him goodnight. I feel betrayed by his lies, his web of lies in which he pretended everything to be good and normal, in which he acted as if he deserved respect and love and demanded this from me. But I was right, hating him.
Mortal fear
In the first months of 1997, I am continually afraid of being killed. It seems like I still do not realize that I survived, I don’t realize that the danger is over, that I am safe now. In the therapy I try to be aware that I survived, that it’s all over now. That I am no longer in danger. But I can’t. I still react to certain triggers with the fear I’m going to be killed. Making mistakes is still a problem. When I suddenly realize I did something wrong, I become terrified. Coldness in my body, strangling coldness in my chest, nausea, heart fluttering, desperate panic.
One time I find out I planned two appointments at the same time — giving flute lessons at the school of music and playing in the orchestra. Rationally I know that this is indeed a problem, but that I will be able to solve it when I call and tell them. Yet I am absolutely sure I will be killed because of this mistake. It is Sunday, and at home I don’t have the telephone numbers of the pupils, so I must wait until tomorrow to settle this. The whole day I am desperate, terrified, all my feelings telling me I will die. I think this will never be solved. There is no hope, no rescue. The whole day I cry.
That day I am doing therapy continuously. I try to find out what is going on, but I don’t manage. I cry, cry, cry. The next day, I change the appointments with the pupils — without anyone even becoming angry, let alone wanting to kill me — and then I calm down. It is remarkable how I can turn the switch and calmly settle the phone calls, in an adult way. Like so often. On the moment I can do something about it, I can step into another role, push away all the fear.
Also in my nightmares I feel the fear of being killed.
A man, some kind of authority, an army officer or so, ties me up and tells me meanwhile that I will die at eight o’clock. I am powerless, but I resist fiercely, I fight for my life, I rage, but he is stronger. I am unbelievably scared and desperate. There are people around me, they don’t do anything to help me, they even enjoy my resistance, they like to see my pain and mortal fear, my hopeless resistance, my hopeless, powerless struggle for my life, my powerlessness. I don’t pay attention to them, I need all my attention for myself. Myself and this man who ties up my hands. Who rubs my skin at some places with some stuff and fastens the electric wires. It is so inconceivably horrible to know that I am going to die, being totally powerless. I wake up terrified.
I remember how fiercely but powerless I reacted, being seven years old, when my sisters and my brother were singing a song about a little girl who died. They liked the song, and even more liked it since I couldn’t stand it. I really couldn’t stand it, it made me so terribly desperate and angry and I hated them intensely because they liked to sing this song and liked my despair. I wanted them to stop singing, I told them to stop. But they laughed, they found it funny and just continued. I felt so desperate and lonely. Inconceivably desperate and lonely, I only consisted of pain and couldn’t escape.
I remember a movie I saw on television, one time in my college years. A movie about something that really happened, about a boy who picks up two hitch-hikers. They assault him and take over the car. When he lays tied up on the back seat, he hears the two men discuss what they will do with him. Since for taking someone as a hostage they will get as much imprisonment as for murder, and the risk to be caught is smaller when they kill him, they decide to kill him. The boy hears their discussion and hears them deciding to kill him — while he lays there totally powerless, being tied up. It must have been horrible to know he would be killed. This starts my fear. I have the feeling that I am going to be killed, just now and here. Although I know very well that I am home alone with the door locked, so no one is killing me, I have at the same time the totally convincing, real experience that someone is killing me. I am fighting for my life. Nothing matters anymore, just surviving physically, fighting for the next breath. I really am convinced I’m looking death in the face. I am incredibly, horribly scared. This boy was really killed. But I’m alive, and I have no idea where this fear comes from and what to do with it.
Some progress
Nevertheless, I am making progress. I sleep better. I don’t have convulsions of my body anymore, I have less nightmares, I can sleep for more hours without a break, and even though I wake up often, it’s not every hour, like it always was, but every two hours. I still sleep badly, still I am tired from not getting enough sleep. But it is much better than it was.
And finally I dare to tell about my memories. In March 1997 I tell my friend Charlotte about the memories of my “other world”. Although it took me a long time to find the courage to talk about this, now it feels natural and trusted to talk about my memories with her. And I feel safe and respected by the way she reacts. I don’t show much of my feelings. I cry a little, but not much. But it feels good to do it this way.
Another friend also reacts well. I tell her my memories in a situation when I am panicky and crying and therefore feel a strong need to tell about what happened. When she asks me about it a couple of weeks later, I see that all those weeks I have carefully avoided to think back at this conversation with her, that I have avoided to remember that I revealed so much of myself. It feels frightening that I told her, and showed my feelings, having been so much more honest and vulnerable than usual. It has scared me more than I realized. Nevertheless, both times that I talked with friends about the abuse by my father, it did not bring up the fear and sleepless nights, when a few months earlier it would have done so, even if I’d have told something small. But after this I don’t talk about it anymore, not even with the friends who now know.
Although I don’t talk about my memories, I feel more and more real when communicating with other people. Not always do I succeed, I frequently cave in and start acting, but more and more I feel real. I notice I am less scared of people and feel less need to shut myself off from people. I can remain in the contact, feeling my feelings and my thoughts, I can show of my feelings and thoughts, instead of hiding them. But still I can stand only limited contact with other people. When I am with others for too long, I can’t hold on and start feeling exhausted and far away. A job that would force me to have contact with people for the greater part of the day would be impossible for me. Also, I still can’t think of letting someone come really near, like in a relationship or when living together with someone. And men are still a big problem, I am still scared of men.
But scared or not, I long to have a relationship. Although my feelings of intense loneliness had already vanished in the first weeks of my self-help therapy, and I am doing well on my own — and even function best when I don’t see anyone for a couple of days — it feels painful not to have a relationship. How can I solve the problems that make it impossible for me to have a relationship? In order to get in touch with my feelings from the past and to process them, I have to do exactly what I’m scared of. That is one of the principles of the therapy. In the case of fear for having a relationship, I don’t know how to do that. To feel what a relationship brings up, I will have to meet someone for whom I do feel love, and who feels that for me, too. But I am rarely able to have those kinds of feelings. So I guess the most I can do is trying not to run away from men and to maintain the few friendships with men that I have, even though these are fairly superficial and occasional contacts.
Only once in these months I see a man whom I like, a man I find attractive. I don’t know him and don’t talk to him. The moment I realize that I could just step up and talk with him, I realize I wouldn’t know what to do with the contact. I feel like I am living in another world and I have no idea what to say to him. I don’t feel a connection. I would feel like a small girl, totally out of place. Or I would find myself in the role of counselor, a role that I often have in contacts and doesn’t feel good. Nevertheless, for a little moment there was this feeling of finding someone attractive, which is really rare for me.
What I miss the most, is having someone really close to me. Having an intense contact with someone. I am happy with the friendships I have, but I long for something that goes deeper than this. I feel a painful hole in my life.
I also try to improve the contact with my mother. Most of the time, just thinking of my mother for an instant is enough to immediately feel intense pain and anger. I have endless “talks” with her in my head that make me desperate. When I think about calling her or seeing her, I am afraid she will not hear me or understand me, and this notion makes me furious and powerless. Since December 1996, when I realized what my father had done to me when I was a child, I had the impression that the intense pain and anger I often feel is connected to my father. Maybe this is also the case on some occasions when I am very angry with my mother? I decide that when I feel these feelings, I will start to process memories of my father — together with the fact that my mother didn’t help me back then.
This works remarkably well. Step by step I progress, until I can think of my mother without exploding immediately. The talks in my head stop. I still have feelings towards her, and surely negative feelings, but they are not that extreme anymore and they don’t trouble me so much, they do not overwhelm me and I am not swayed by them. I can handle them and they stop when they are out of context. I feel it was horrible how she treated me as a child, but I also feel that my contact with her now is different, since I am no longer dependent on her and I can defend myself effectively. This already became clear to me in October, but it becomes easier now. I don’t feel powerless anymore, and do not feel such an urgent need to be heard and seen. I realize that our present contact is only limited and superficial, and that I really would like a warm, deep contact with her, but that that is not how things are. It hurts, but it is not a disaster. I will try to make the most of this contact. But I can live with the fact that the result will always be limited.
Out of these feelings of relaxation and rest, I am able to visit her in May 1997. I feel the contact then is better than it has ever been, and better than I ever had expected it to be. We both seem to have changed. I can intervene when I don’t like the way we talk, and I can talk about myself (although I don’t dare to talk about my memories of my father), even when she doesn’t invite me to do so. And for the first time I feel she really listens to me, she reacts with empathy. There are still awkward moments, but I am satisfied with the way it works this time. All my fighting and struggling did bring me something indeed.
Yet, I feel sad after this visit. I strongly feel that I needed my mother’s attention and empathy as a child, and not really as an adult. It is good what is happening now. But what I got, I actually needed when I was a child.
I made some other progress, really big progress. From December 1996 to May 1997 I have been ill for only three or four days — in the time of year in which I would always be ill for at least three months, many many years over. Always, without exception. It seems that acknowledging and, partly, processing my memories of abuse by my father, did bring enormous improvement of my physical health. I am really, really happy with this.
Internet
I try to find information about therapy on the Internet. I find websites about scientific research into memories and traumatic experiences. This information fits with my own situation — the fragments of memories, and these memories being “weird”, different from daily memories. Especially Jim Hopper’s website helps me to understand more of myself and feels like support that I can use well. Also I find information about books that help me, like Betrayal Trauma by Jennifer J. Freyd, Unchained Memories by Leonore Terr, Recovered Memories of Abuse by Kenneth S. Pope and Laura S. Brown, and Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman.
This last author describes in her book the aspects of traumatic experiences that should be talked over: giving words to the traumatic images including the physical sensations, carefully verbalizing feelings, the meaning of what happened (“why?”, “why me?”, issues of guilt and responsibility and a new interpretation of the traumatic experience), and an ethical attitude that support the dignity and value of the survivor. Stettbacher’s four steps turn out to be rooted in more traditional trauma therapy.
I read this great fragment in a book by Kenneth S. Pope and Laura S. Brown: “…catharsis of the sort that was popularized in the early 1970s in the encounter movement, but which has not been shown to be effective in accomplishing much of anything except destroying pillows” and I think of my refusal to do rage work and Robert’s incomprehension. Yes, it was only the sale of pillows that profited from this therapy.
On John Speyrer’s Primal Psychotherapy Page I find e-mail addresses of people who are also doing self-help therapy by Jenson’s and Stettbacher’s books, and who want to write to other people about doing this. I like the idea, although I still am doing fine alone, even with the horrible memories that I became aware of the past period. I start writing with some people, and this feels good. But in the contact with John Speyrer and some other people on the Internet, I find out that they have little experience with Stettbacher’s or Jenson’s therapy. They have only been doing primal therapy, and they think that Stettbacher’s therapy is primal therapy. I feel disappointed about this.
But the correspondence with John and some other people forces me again to make things really clear to myself, to be very much aware of what I am doing in my therapy. In spite of my disappointment, this helps me when I do the therapy.
I have experienced that the therapy of the four steps, unlike primal therapy, is not based on the idea that pain is good, is curing, or even necessary. The four steps lead me to standing up against such an idea. In the therapy I acknowledge the pain and I feel the pain, but the therapy is based on saying “no” to the pain, rejecting the pain. The principle of this therapy is that pain means: something is wrong. Pain is a signal that something is harming me, and I have to stand up to restore my broken integrity. I have experienced how the therapy has cured me this way, by making sense of the past, unraveling the past. The therapy of the four steps means to me: bringing clarity where once was confusion and coming to a deeply felt rejection of what has been done to me.
I also read this in the additional information that Stettbacher sent to me:
The motto of my therapy is: “If there is any sense in suffering, I see this sense only in removing the suffering…”
The idea that in the therapy the suffering must be re-lived, is not only wrong, it is absurd. If that would be the goal of the therapy, this would be highly aggravating, since suffering that does not end, finally destroys life, kills all life.
There are indeed “therapies” that consist of re-experiencing pain; the result is a totally broken human being, who can only hope and wait for a “hereafter” and who does not find any joy in life anymore.
Yet, the motto of my therapy also leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to discover the causes of the suffering, to identify them, to resist them, in order to avoid and prevent suffering in the future, so that life can be preserved. (Translated from German by myself.)
When I was reading this for the first time, I felt confused about it, I didn’t understand. Back then, I was doing therapy with Robert, and what Stettbacher writes is in contradiction with what I learned in Robert’s therapy. But I thought about it and started using it in the self-help therapy, and then I experienced how important this was and how indispensable to make my problems disappear.
When I correspond with John and others I again conclude that for me “uncovering lies” is a really important part of my therapy. In a way, the conclusions I had to draw as a child about the abuse, have caused the most lasting harm. I had to believe so many lies, and I am still struggling with them. In the therapy I often encounter intense confusion whether it was good or bad what my father did. I found in myself a firmly rooted conviction that I needed all this, that I needed this punishment to become better, that I had been bad and should first be made better, so then papa would be able to love me. That it wasn’t possible for him to love me now, I shouldn’t be so bad. I could become better only through this punishment. Feelings that pain is good, that pain is nice and that pain means someone loves me. Sexual arousal together with pain. And the idea that nothing terrible happened, that what I remember wasn’t bad, and that it is nonsense that I should have problems because of this. I am still alive, so nothing really bad happened. Why all this excitement? It wasn’t bad, I survived, it was necessary and good.
I blame myself for not having cried for help, and I feel it is therefore my fault that I have been abused and not my father’s fault. Besides, I cooperated, I undressed myself, walked to the bed and laid down — I did it myself. I also feel he had the right to do this to me since he had problems himself, so he couldn’t help doing it and wasn’t responsible. Besides, he made sure that I didn’t die, he always stopped in time, never went “too far”. I owe my life to him, so I should be grateful. He didn’t harm me, he restrained himself and took care that nothing happened to me. He saved me. Also, I have strong thoughts that I am only a thing and that I am there for him, my own reason for existence lies in being there for him. Besides, I didn’t have trouble with it since I just was so small when it happened. Small children don’t feel.
I know all this is not true. I struggle and struggle with this in the therapy, but it is really hard to disprove this. I often notice that these ideas about abuse cause me to re-experience the feelings. The most effective sessions, the sessions that cause a clear improvement of my symptoms, are not the sessions in which I feel as if the abuse is happening again, are not the sessions in which re-experiencing takes place like the one primal therapists try to force, but the sessions in which I very carefully and honestly examine my memories, in which I discover the conclusions that are connected with this memory, and in which I can acknowledge these conclusions as being lies. When I was a child, I had no other option than to draw these conclusions and believe the lies — lies that were told me or suggested to me. Now, this isn’t necessary anymore. I experience that unmasking lies has an immediate curing effect. Really knowing and realizing that the abuse was wrong, really saying “no” to abuse, that is what cures me.
But it isn’t easy at all. Often I struggle for a long time with all kinds of lies that I still believe deep inside. When I discover such a lie, I often try to reject this lie immediately, saying “no” to it, telling that it is not true — since I did experience that saying “no” has a positive effect on my health. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. On those moments I can say loudly “this is a lie”, but all the while I still believe in it, deep inside I don’t see it as a lie but as the truth. So it doesn’t bring me any further to say “no” loudly. I have to face the lie, carefully look at it and really see why it is not true. I have to take seriously that I believed this lie and still believe it, I need to examine carefully why I believed it — which makes me scared since I think that I will have to conclude that it wasn’t a lie but the truth, and I can’t live with that. I have to look carefully what this lie is about, including all the painful details. Not in order to feel them, but to invalidate them. I have to know my “arguments” for this lie, to be able to find out that I don’t agree with them. Then I can finally decide that this lie is a lie. And then my symptoms diminish immediately.
About all these things I write in my mails. Some e-mail correspondences don’t bring me much since the therapies we do differ too much. Other correspondences do feel good. First, I feel e-mail contact is ideal for me. Writing is still much easier for me than talking. At first, it is a surprising discovery for me to write so intensively, I feel I can really relieve my feelings, really share what is bothering me (although I don’t dare to write about my memories). I am happy with this. But gradually I start to feel that this indeed works well, but that I long for direct contact with people, too. People with whom I can talk, not only write. People who I can see, in spite of my fear of talking to people. I found a lot on the Internet, but now I need something else. Besides, I long for action, I long for doing other things than looking inwards.
Again… therapy
It is time to start living, and doing less therapy, I hope. I would like to meet new people, something that is special to me since I always felt strongly that I lacked the energy for contact with other people. I would like to go on holiday, to go walking in Scotland or canoeing in Sweden, that kind of thing. I long to be outdoors, in the open country, to go abroad and be active. Enthusiastically I start reading brochures.
But when I read them, I lose courage. I realize that even the most effortless holiday would be too hard for me. I don’t sleep enough, I feel broken if I even go swimming for a quarter of an hour, and having people around me the whole day would totally exhausts me. This is not (yet) possible for me. I feel very disappointed.
This makes it especially clear to me how my reaction to physical effort limits my life. I always feel this when I swim, which I do every week with a friend. I like to swim, I like to be together with my friend, the contact with her is good, and I feel it is good to do some physical exercise to keep fit. But every week my body feels broken, and the night afterwards I have a lot of pain and don’t sleep. My body still feels like it has been torn to a thousand pieces after the smallest physical effort. I feel scared and hazy, far away and not within my body anymore. The past months, I have come to think that maybe the way I feel after physical exercise looks like how I felt after being abused with electricity. A couple of times it did help me to process the symptoms this way in the therapy. Then the pain diminished and I slept well. But other times I couldn’t do anything against it, therapy didn’t work. I feel it can’t be good to feel broken once a week, being exhausted already most of the time, and I consider to stop swimming.
But when I realize that I can’t even do the most effortless holiday, I decide not to stop swimming but to pay more attention to this problem in the therapy. Sleeping has improved, I feel quite well during the day, this problem with physical exercise now really bothers me. It’s keeping me from what I want to do, and I want to clear this up. I don’t want to give up, I don’t want to resign myself to the limits that my father’s behavior has forced upon me.
I remember that these symptoms caused by physical exercise often troubled me when I went to Robert’s therapy room. I then had to climb about four stairs. Having arrived upstairs I felt broken, not in the world anymore, out of my body, scared, exhausted and in pain. I remember Robert telling me that I shouldn’t behave so dramatically tired every time I entered his room — but in reality I was concealing how awkward I felt, as much as I could. He thought I was behaving demonstratively to manipulate him, and asked me to think what it was I tried to get from him this way. It didn’t enter his mind that this was simply a problem I had with physical effort, caused by what happened to me in the past. He didn’t believe me when I told him.
Now, now that I’m helping myself with Stettbacher’s and Jenson’s methods, now I finally have the opportunity to really examine my problem concerning physical effort. And hopefully to solve it, since it makes a lot of things in my life impossible. I long so much for a life with less limitations. I long to be active, to really live, to be able to go on a holiday and to have the possibility to choose an active holiday. I want to be able to do more, to have a better life. I want to study, to have a job, meet new people, be in a relationship, have children. I feel my life is passing by. I feel good about some parts of my life — playing in the orchestra and giving concerts, working at the day-nursery, and sometimes in social contacts. But this is only a small part of my life, far too small. The other, biggest part of my life feels awfully and unbearably purposeless. I am fed up with this situation.
Despite this, I am really better than I used to be, and progress steadily — going up and down, but gradually improving. I just would like it to go faster, and I would like more changes in my daily activities, in work and relationships, not only in my health, no matter how important those changes are.
I cancel my plans for a holiday, but I do try to find new activities. I again think of starting studying. But just the idea makes me sleepless again, I start getting convulsions in my body again, and I feel empty and dead inside. I am aware that if I’d persist, I will have hard times, and I doubt whether I will manage to handle this. I hesitate what is best to do.
And yet again I get problems with social services. In January 1997 I thought that the financial problems that had been discussed in the hearing, were solved. I was told then that my appeal was found legitimate and that I would get the money I had asked for. But social services doesn’t pay me and in May 1997 I suppose something went wrong. I call about it, and I have to go there with the documents. This brings up a lot of old tension, it means having hard nights, but when I have been there, I expect everything to be settled. Then I get a letter that they will pay. But the amount of money they mention is only half the money that was promised to me after the hearing.
On one hand I realize that they probably just made a silly mistake, they didn’t read the documents well, they worked sloppily. I think this will be set right if I call about it. But on the other hand it brings up strong old pain and again I am totally upset. Crying for hours and hours, totally desperate and in panic. Old feelings of being powerless, always losing, having no rights, being nothing, totally nothing, something other people can just treat the way they want, since I am nothing, worthless. Running into a wall, nothing I do does help, being used, downtrodden, being killed, killed by people who are totally indifferent towards my life, who wouldn’t mind if I died, who have so much themselves but nevertheless want to take away from me the little bit I have. My father who takes away my life and wants it for himself, who takes away my body and wants it for himself, who doesn’t care that I have nothing left, who himself wants everything, both what is rightfully his and what is rightfully mine. Feelings of not being allowed to protest, I get already so much, I should be grateful for whatever I get and shut up. I don’t have the right to ask for more, I am (I think) only a parasite.
I am scared, too — this financial problem needs to turn out well, it has to. I need certainty, I can’t stand any uncertainty anymore, I am so scared. It should be solved NOW, I need certainty NOW. I can’t wait any longer, can’t go on hoping, I can’t stand not knowing whether it will be all right in the end or not. I need to be safe, not maybe in the future, not maybe in the future if I survive all this. I need to know it now, so that I won’t have to be so scared anymore.
Feelings of total powerlessness, not being able to do anything against what is happening. Someone has to help me. I can’t do this alone, I can’t do this myself, I am no match. Mama has to come, mama has to help me, mama has to intervene. Despair. Where is mama? Mama should come, now, now, now, or else it will be too late, it is already too late, please help me now. Not yet another time, not any longer, I can’t go on, can’t go on, can’t. I thought it was over and now it happens again, I can’t go on. This is not fair, not fair, not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong, nothing wrong, then why does this happen? Why does this happen to me again and again? Why? Why do I always lose? Why does he want to hurt me again and again? Why isn’t there any safe place for me?
I need to be safe, you have to be nice to me, take care of me, see me, hear me, do what is good for me, you should give, be caring, give me what I need. You shouldn’t harm me, shouldn’t take from me. I should have power, my “no” should have stopped you, shouldn’t even have been necessary, I shouldn’t even have needed power since you shouldn’t have wished to hurt me.
Hollow fear, not existing anymore, being dead inside, I cry for hours. I walk through my house in desperation and lay on the floor, desperately struggling with all this. I even think of suicide. Although it isn’t in a way that would make me do it, it startles me. I haven’t had this for a long time, feelings of wanting to be dead.
Consistently I use the four steps, try to find the connection with my past that causes all these feelings, but I don’t succeed. I know from experience that it often is a detail, but I can’t find the detail that started all this despair. Gradually, the strong feeling that this is unbearable, that I can’t survive until tomorrow, becomes less. I know the next day I will be able to do something about it, but not now — when I got the letter, social services was already closed. And my counselor, who helped me the past two years with these legal procedures, can’t be reached until tomorrow. After some hours I manage to take up a pencil and write a letter to social services, writing them that a mistake has been made, asking why this has happened and whether it can be changed. In spite of my urgent feeling that I need my counselor, I decide that in the first instance this letter is enough. I guess my counselor would advise me to write a letter, too. My feeling that I need an authority to stand up for me is probably old.
Although I sleep better after writing this letter, the night afterwards I sleep badly, and also the next nights are hard. Before this happened, I was able to sleep for four hours without a break, but that is gone now. Yet, I feel that I have processed all triggers I could think of. Fortunately, I feel quite good during the day, and my sleeping isn’t as bad as it was before. So I have the opportunity the look further during therapy sessions, to find out what is going on.
I am astonished and disappointed that this subject again causes so much pain, fear and despair. I had hoped that in December the connection with the past had been solved, but it hasn’t. Nevertheless, my reaction is less severe than it was in December, things did change. Especially the awful physical symptoms that I had in December, when I felt my body was dead or swollen or falling apart in bubbles, are now almost absent, and also I almost don’t have any re-experiences of shocks. The first hours I felt miserable, but then I started to feel quite well. The only problem left is sleeping badly. And I can’t find out why and I can’t solve it.
Old feelings that everything is my fault — I should have prevented this, I should have done the right thing so all this wouldn’t have happened.
After two weeks in which I gradually become ill of exhaustion from lack of sleep, I remember the moment that I read the letter from social services. I remember my first reaction: I thought they made a stupid mistake, and I thought I could have known that they would make this mistake, and I could have prevented them from making this mistake if I had realized this before. This “I could have known it and I could have prevented it” brings up strong feelings and I realize that it was this what caused all my fear, pain, anger and despair. I wonder why this caused such an extreme reaction. I try to process it in a therapy session. I become aware that as a child, I did think that I could have prevented what my father did — if I hadn’t done certain things or just had done other things, if I had understood what this time would be the reason for “punishment”, then I could have done the right things in time. I realize that I desperately tried to find out what I did wrong, to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again.
Now that I see this, I again realize that what my father did had only to do with what came up in his head, and that it never made any difference what I did or didn’t do. I really wasn’t able to do anything about the situation. In my head there was a whole system of what I should and shouldn’t do, but I don’t know whether he told me this or whether I made this up to find an explanation for his behavior and to get a feeling of exerting any influence. Which of these two possibilities was true — it wouldn’t have made any difference. He did just what he wanted to. I wasn’t able to prevent that anyhow.
In my present problem with social services, I think that maybe I could have prevented that they made this mistake, but in fact it wasn’t my duty to foresee and prevent this. They should have worked more carefully and they shouldn’t make such mistakes. I didn’t fail by not preventing them from making mistakes, like I thought at first. After thinking it over carefully, after trying to understand what is and isn’t true in the past and the present, I suddenly sleep much better. That is a relief.
And finally, after sending my letter, I do get the money — the total amount of money that was promised after the hearing. But in all these months, I didn’t manage to do anything else than therapy.
Again… sleeping
In the meantime, a Dutch translation of Jenson’s book has been published. On the first page, there is a short comment by two psychologists who are positive about Jenson’s method. I decide to write to them and to ask whether it is possible to talk with one of them. I don’t want to do therapy with them, but I would like to tell how I am doing the therapy myself and ask whether I might do some things differently. Somehow, I have the felling that my therapy should have more and faster results. That my progress goes too slow. I feel like I am overlooking something.
With one of them, I have two meetings, July 1997. It feels good to tell my history to someone, especially since this psychologist reacts in a positive way. Also, it helps to talk with her about my sleeping problems, although this doesn’t mean I immediately sleep better. I do indeed sleep better for a week after the first meeting, because of the relief of having told my story and getting an empathic reaction. But after that I sleep just as badly as I did before. What helps me nevertheless, is that this psychologist tells me that for someone with a history like mine, it is quite normal to have sleeping problems, even after several years of good therapy. On one hand, this is painful for me to hear, and I find it hard to accept that she doesn’t have a quick solution to my problem. On the other hand it brings me more understanding of myself and it helps me to stop thinking that I’m doing something wrong in the therapy. This way, I can stop trying to find what I do wrong. I can continue the therapy in a more relaxed way, without pressing myself to solve this problem quickly.
I feel that this is the hardest part of doing therapy without a therapist: I don’t have any information about the normal progress in a therapy process, I can’t find out whether the improvement is fast or slow compared to others. I realize that therefore I run the risk of quitting therapy disappointedly. It seems natural to think that the therapy doesn’t work when the changes don’t come immediately — whereas the therapy really does work, but just not as fast as I would like it to. The meeting with this psychologist makes this more clear to me.
Furthermore, it turns out that my goal to find out whether I am doing something wrong in my self-help therapy is not realistic, at least not in two meetings. It’s impossible to tell all of my history and talk about how I use the therapy, that this therapist could see things that I possibly overlooked. But she doesn’t have any remarks about the therapy that I do not already know. On one hand I am disappointed about this, on the other hand it makes it clear to me that I am doing fine by myself and that I have enough knowledge and information. She says I am welcome to talk more often, but she also says I am doing well the way I am doing therapy alone.
I feel clearly that I don’t want to have therapy with a therapist again — just two meetings while continuing to stand on my own two feet is fine, but I don’t want more than that. My independence feels important to me, I don’t want to be a patient anymore.
Sleeping is still a big problem, some weeks it is better, other weeks it is worse. I still often feel desperate at night, I have a lot of pain. No matter how tired I am, even when I fall on my bed in the evening staggering from exhaustion, I can’t sleep. But during the day I clearly feel better than I used to. I still have days when I feel broken and exhausted, but more and more I have days that, in spite of having slept too little, I am far less tired than ever before. I have more energy to do things. I certainly can’t function the whole day, but I can do more and function better than I used to. Partly this is because everything I do is easier for me, I don’t have to exert myself to do daily things like watering the plants or calling someone, these things “just go by themselves”. Compared to what I am used to, I function quite well. I feel clearminded and I can take initiatives.
Only once in these months do I take a sleeping pill, because I am feeling exhausted and desperate and can’t sleep. I long for sleep so overwhelmingly, like so often, without getting it, and this time I take a pill. The next day, I feel absolutely miserable. Totally exhausted and like I am not on the world and with an enormous longing for sleep. With a feeling of lack of sleep that I remember from the years I slept on pills, which is far worse than when I hardly get any sleep at night. It’s clear to me now that sleeping pills are not a solution to my sleeping problems, not even temporarily. But the real solution doesn’t come, I don’t see any progress in this matter.
How should I continue? Go to a therapist for help? I long so strongly for someone who can make me sleep. But I already know that no psychotherapist can do this, and again and again I conclude that I don’t have any other choice than to continue the therapy that I am doing. This therapy brought me enormous progress, like nothing else ever did. How far it will bring me I don’t know, but giving up will certainly bring me nothing. I try as much as possible to live the way I want to live, and to clear away whatever gets in my way. But also, I am simply fed up with doing therapy. I long so to just live my life, instead of again and again solving problems that make it impossible to live. I remind myself that, according to Stettbacher, this therapy takes a lot of time, patience and perseverance. I remind myself he advises not to give up. Stettbacher writes that lasting results can’t be expected immediately, and that it is important not to quit but continue to protest and stand up for yourself in the therapy, to stand up for your rights as a child and for how your life would have been without damage.
So I keep going. I continue therapy. But I am sick of doing therapy, too. I just want an ordinary life, without having to solve problems all the time. In spite of the words of the psychologist I met, I am worried about this sleeplessness. It is also frustrating to experience my life passing without being able to really live, just surviving.
From the library I fetch some books about sleeping problems, although I know that all the advice in those books is familiar to me, and that I have tried them all many times before, without result. But this time I read something that helps me: I read that being a night owl or an early bird is a biological fact that one can’t change. The writers tell that past notions about this phenomenon have been wrong and moralistic. In the past, people thought that going to bed early and waking up early was healthy and morally right, and going to bed late and waking up late unhealthy and morally wrong. This idea is now known to be wrong. They write that it is important to arrange your life as much as possible to your own biological pattern. That that is good and healthy, not one of the two patterns. Nothing is wrong with being a night owl, there only is a problem since society is adjusted to early birds and doesn’t take night owls into account. It can be hard to arrange your working and private life according to your own natural pattern when you are a night owl, but it nevertheless is the best solution. Anyhow, it is impossible to change this biological rhythm. It is not possible to change yourself into an early bird when you are a night owl.
Yes, I did experience this, and I cry intensely reading this. I have to cry so terribly when I read I am not wrong and it is not my fault that I am a night owl. My whole childhood, and as an adult, too, I heard that I was bad since I was active in the evening and couldn’t sleep, and felt awful in the morning and preferred to sleep long. Again and again my mother told me that this was wrong and that I should change. That her way of living, sleeping early and rising early, was right and healthy and meant she was good. Again and again she told me that I was bad and that all my problems, illnesses, sleeplessness or whatever, would improve if I would show a bit more discipline and be active early in the morning and sleep early in the evening. If I tried hard enough, if I would persevere, this would finally work out. It would be the solution to everything that troubled me.
There even was a song when I was a child that said this — in the verses some disease was mentioned and then the refrain told “Go to bed early, go to bed early, that is the only medicine…” That song has been whining in my ears, even now. Every day of my life, as a child and as an adult, I disapproved of myself because I was a night owl. Every day again I tried to change. Added to the sleeping problems I already had, this made my situation even harder.
Now I cry and cry because of all the unfair, angry and condemning words of my mother, I cry realizing that I was good, all that time, but had to think I was bad. I cry that I was rejected because of something that was already a problem, since school and other obligations didn’t take this into account. All that time I was rejected for something I needed help with. I needed understanding. I cry because all that time I got reproaches, when I needed support. My mother never saw me as good, but I had the right to have a mama who saw that I was good and who treated me that way. I had the right that she wanted to learn to know me as I was, and wanted to help me with my abilities and my impossibilities that I had as a human being. She had to be there for me, not against me.
Now that I read these books, I stop trying to turn myself into an early bird and I live more according to my own biological rhythm. I do in the evenings what I want to do then and I avoid as much as possible to have obligations in the morning — without telling myself that this is bad and should change, like I did for such a long time. I go to bed at one o’clock in the night, since then I have the best chance to fall asleep and before that time I never sleep anyhow, no matter how early I go to bed.
Accepting my own pattern doesn’t bring changes to my sleeping problems — I have the same problems with falling asleep and sleeping on, and I have just as many nights without sleep and with desperate crying fits and a body that hurts from exhaustion. I have just as many nights doing therapy, sipping hot milk with honey, and trying all the other tricks that don’t work. But although accepting that I am a night owl doesn’t change my sleeplessness, it still improves how I think about myself and that is progress. And I don’t force myself anymore to go to bed at ten o’clock, like I did before — at least I save myself some desperate waking hours.
A theme that often comes up in my daily life, and therefore also in the therapy, is whether or not I believe my own history, and my struggle to reject what my father did to me. Sometimes it helps when I can say sincerely that it is terrible that I am forced to spend so much time trying to believe my own history, finding out and being aware of what did and didn’t happen. Then I sleep much better afterwards.
By the end of October 1997 I experience that whether or not I believe my own history also has consequences for my health. I find out it isn’t a coincidence that I almost haven’t been ill since December 1996, when I realized what happened to me. In October 1997 I watch a documentary on television in which some women talk about being abused. While I am watching this, my own history seems implausible to me. I feel I will never be able to talk about my memories the way these women do, since no one will believe me, I will never tell about it since my history is too absurd. Some hours later, I am ill. Inflammation of my throat, fever, the usual symptoms. Also, I suddenly sleep badly, after a period that this has been better. I lay ill, exhausted and desperate on my bed and I don’t know what to do.
Why did I become ill and sleepless, so suddenly? I process the events from the day I became ill, and I do see my reaction of “no one will believe me, my history is too absurd and I don’t have evidence”, the reaction I had when watching television. Also, in a therapy session some days later, I am aware that I not only expected other people to not believe me, but also that I don’t believe it myself anymore. It makes me cry, realizing this, but it doesn’t bring a change to my illness and insomnia.
Some days later, I read what I have written so far about my history and my self-help therapy. I read a page with dreams. Many dreams are about sexual abuse and abuse with electricity. While I read these dreams I suddenly think: “This has really happened. This is what I went through.” At that moment I am deeply aware of this truth. In the next hours, my throat ache and fever leave, and that night I sleep well.
So, it’s that important to acknowledge reality, to see reality as real, also deep inside. The days that I noticed my reaction to the documentary, the days that I realized that deep inside I didn’t believe my history anymore, those days I still didn’t believe my history. And therefore, the topic of “not believing” didn’t improve my situation. It wasn’t until I truly believed myself, that I could sleep again and recover from my infection.
Some weeks later, I re-read a part of what I have written, about what I started realizing at the end of 1996, and again I feel: “This really happened. And it should never have happened.” That night I sleep 5½ hours without a break — a feat that is still rare.
Again… talking
I can distinguish some topics in events that cause the worst nights: I have always really bad nights after someone has touched me when I didn’t want to, or in a way I didn’t like. Also, I can’t sleep when during the day I have been crying but had to stop before I had finished crying, for example because the door bell rang. And not being honest in social contacts, especially about topics that get in the way in the contact, also has a disastrous effect on my sleeping pattern. Although I speak out about what I feel and think much more than I used to, the situations in which I still don’t do this become really clear. They touch upon an old mechanism that completely blocks my ability to sleep, even when the present event isn’t that important. Every time that I am gently and politely dishonest, the night afterwards is a disaster.
I work on this in the therapy, but also in daily life, by trying to be honest nonetheless. This is not easy for me. It is frightening to have my own opinion, I am scared to disagree, scared to be caught when not being right, scared to be criticized in a way that humiliates and shatters me — like my father did, who always liked to bring me down.
I still feel the fear of not being able to defend my words. I am still easily silenced when other people don’t agree with me and especially when people are telling me so in a less sincere way or even become angry — I tremble for fear when someone else shows the slightest sign of anger. And still, my words are frequently misunderstood or not heard or distorted — as probably happens to every human being, and often without bad intentions of the others. But as soon as someone else somewhat distorts, ignores or denies what I say, I feel overwhelmed by an intense, paralyzing, desperate powerlessness since I realize that my words can always be distorted, ignored or denied.
I realize how powerless and speechless I have been in the contact with my father, how he again and again silenced me, invalidated and discarded my words — like that time when I told him I didn’t believe that my name was written on my back. I was so small then, I was no match for an adult man, and I was dependent on him. This happened so often, he did this continuously every day. I have been so scared and felt my words to be so powerless, so nonexistent. With this fear, this fear of drowning as soon as someone else says a word, I still struggle in my daily life. This fear paralyzes me, makes my head turn blank, leaves me speechless. But I fight back, I fight for my right to talk, for my right to be heard and for the right that my words are acknowledged.
Again and again I have to realize that my powerlessness to reach my father, to be heard and understood by him, was not caused by the words I used, but that this was his fault. He chose not to hear me, not to understand me. He did this because he wanted it this way. He wanted to distort my words. The problem was not that my words were unclear or ambiguous — for anyone who wanted to understand what I said my words would have been totally clear, there couldn’t possibly have been a misunderstanding, and no reason to distort my words. I always tried to improve the situation by searching for different words, the right words, more words, clearer words.I was frantically looking for the correct words. But my words weren’t the problem, I wasn’t the problem. I just didn’t have a chance against his blunt unwillingness, his malicious delight or even sadism. All the time I was thinking that if I would find the right words, I would be heard. For years and years I desperately tried to find the right words, the words that would reach my father. But that never helped, since there was nothing wrong with my words.
And even now I often try desperately to find the ultimate words, the words that tell so precisely what I want to say that it’s impossible to distort them, that they can’t be misunderstood — again and again I try to find those words. But those words don’t exist. Again and again I have to find out in the therapy that I am not doing something wrong, that I do not fail to find the correct words, but that I just can’t control what someone else does. Now that I see and feel how urgent my need for finding THE RIGHT words is, it becomes easier for me to see that I indeed had no other option as a child, but that I now do have other options, more effective strategies. As a child I couldn’t say: “Why are you doing this, you reproduce my words wrongly, why do you distort what I say, why do you ignore what I say? I want you to listen to me.” But the people I’m talking with now are not my father and I am no longer a small, dependent, powerless child. I start to realize that on many occasions, I can say this kind of things. And when I do this and find out I am safe doing this, my ability to sleep often improves considerably — for a while.
Also, I am intensely relieved by the occasions that I don’t have to say such things, the times that people react in a nice, sincere way. Fortunately, I have contacts in which this happens, with friends and in some correspondences. These positive experiences also touch me deeply. These positive experiences, in which I feel understood and heard, bring me relief, the feeling of having the right to exist, they make me feel safe and relaxed. They help me to live, to exist.
And still I often notice my unwanted smile, that I hated so much in the contact with my father. This smile reared its head every time when I was angry with him. I didn’t want to smile, but it just came. Even when I was an adult this always happened — instead of telling him “I don’t want you to do this and I am angry with you, you don’t have the right to do this”, which I longed to say so strongly, I smiled and became very nice, childish and submissive. I hated it, I hated this smile that came on my face when I definitely didn’t want it, and yet I couldn’t control it. As an adult, I sometimes just averted my head, so he wouldn’t see this smile. I couldn’t manage to tell him what I wanted to tell him on those moments, I couldn’t give him my anger and protest, but at least I managed not to give him that smile, and that felt good.
It strikes me that I often still react with such a smile, at moments when I would like to tell that I feel something is wrong in the contact. I notice very well that this smiling, confirming reaction does not solve the situation, it even makes it worse. I try to recognize these situations in time and to be aware of the difference between the past and the present, and then to say what I would like to say in spite of all the old signals that warn me for danger.
It remains a struggle: to talk, to express my feelings. But I don’t give up. I fight, I fight for the right to my words, the right to be heard and acknowledged in what I say — then and now. And I improve, it becomes less hard for me to tell about my feelings and thoughts, and I am less scared afterwards. I do make progress.
Nightmares and other dreams
I have less and less nightmares. In the past I had them every night, and often several ones in one night. Now, I some weeks go by without even one nightmare. But sometimes I still have them.
I dream about a therapy group where people imitate abuse. They tie everyone up. I panic and I am upset and go away. Then they don’t tie me up, but no one pays attention to how I feel.
—
I dream I see a king being murdered, and I see who did it, a man and a woman. It happens in a castle. I tell the police what I saw, who did it, but they don’t believe me and don’t do anything since the murderer is a prince. But now I am in danger because I told what they did. There is also another horrible thing happening at this castle. From above I am looking in a big glass room where people are being tortured with electricity. The floor of the room is electrified. People are pushed into the room. A lot of people in the room don’t even look human anymore, it is horrible to see. They are being punished, but I don’t know for what.
—
In a dream there is my usual confusion whether my father is dead or not. But suddenly it is completely clear: he is alive and kicking and I am standing right in front of him and I see my chance to ask him for clarity. I ask my father to acknowledge that he abused me with electricity. He reacts evasively, tries to dodge the question, but I continue to be clear and strong and I tell him I want him to tell me what he did.
And then he does. He tells the story as I remember it. Now that all is clear with all the horror, in this dream I get more empathy from other people, and I also understand more of myself. But from my mother I don’t get any empathy, she only cares about what my father did to her, and still sees herself as his primary victim.
Then, in my dream, my father also tells that he cheated upon my mother with another woman. My father shows a video tape. I see an adult woman to whom he is doing the same things he did to me. On the video she begs him not to do electricity on her, no electricity, please not electricity, no electric current through her body, please, please. Begging, she goes on all fours on the bed. The camera shows the wires laying there, the wires that can do this. The woman begs him to be nice to her.
With tears in my heart and in full concentration I watch this movie, this movie that is telling me something about myself. I carefully look for some information about my own history. I see the wires, the wires that hurt me so much, too. I watch them carefully. I hear the woman say the words “electricity” and “current” and those words hurt so much and make me so scared, but it also feels good that she says them, that she names reality for me, that I hear it. It is so horrible to see this movie, but nevertheless the woman on the video is adult and has a lot of power and independence. What is most horrible of this movie is that this happened to me as a small, powerless child. I cry and cry.
—
In a dream I am on a train with a therapy group, we are going to a place where we will get therapy for a couple of weeks. Sebastian, my cat, is with me. But my father is here as well. When we arrive, I go to one of the therapists, a woman, since I am upset that my father is here, too. I wonder how I can do therapy this way. I feel I can’t, with him being there, I will not be able to tell what he has done to me. I go to the woman to discuss this, but before I can even say a word she says hatefully: “Well, you want to demonstrate how smart you are? We don’t like that here and we are not impressed. You must learn to be more humble. Go away now, I don’t want you.” I am dumbstruck and desperate and it hurts so much and I don’t know where to go.
There isn’t a place where I am safe and I will not be able to trust this therapy and I will not dare to tell what happened to me and how I feel. I don’t know what to do. Like a wounded animal I retreat, I go to the room where the cats are. There are lots of them. As soon as I step into the room, Sebastian comes towards me with his familiar meow. I am so happy to see him and he comforts me. When I wake up, the reaction of the “therapist” makes me think of my mother.
—
Something is up with refugees who need second-hand clothes, and I decide to give them some of my clothes that I don’t wear myself anymore. I look inside my wardrobe, select some clothes, and try on some of them to look whether I still want them or not. Then my mother comes in and she is angry and full of hate. She says I shouldn’t hesitate and just give away those clothes since I know I haven’t worn them for a long time. And besides, I have bought a lot of new clothes recently, sure enough she saw that and that was wrong, too, and I should stop doing that. It hurts. It is the way she has treated me in the past, hateful anger, calling me wrong and bad. And I think of the time she forced me to give away one of my dolls.
—
I dream I tell mama what papa did to me. She unwraps a package, and in this parcel is a doll I made myself and a letter in which I wrote what my father did, that he abused me with electricity. I had not yet decided whether to give my mother the package, but she finds it and opens it and now she knows. She reacts with shock and astonishment, and she believes me, but she doesn’t support me in any way. She still only pays attention to herself.
—
I am laying on my bed, my face to the wall. I hear someone behind me, I know it is my father and I am frozen with terror and panic since I know that I will have to go through unbearable pain again. I hear my father’s breath, it is horrible to feel him so close to me. I can feel things he fastens to my body, and feel severe pain and cramp in my neck.
—
I remember only fragments of the dreams. There is a short image of myself, as a little girl, curled up in a corner of her little bedstead, sleeping. I remember vaguely feeling grief since the girl has been awoken and is in pain. And a fragment with pain from below, I am torn open, widely open, and it hurts.
—
In my dream I am in a psychiatric hospital. I walk into my room and then I am totally upset and in a panic. The room has been equipped with a special bed and equipment to give electric shocks. I think this is going to happen with me. I feel terrified and desperate and powerless. Then the psychiatrist comes in and finds me there, and she takes me with her and reassures me and says this is no longer my room and this will not happen to me, didn’t I see that my stuff is not here anymore? She brings me to a new room. It is very small and cold since it has a stone floor but fortunately there is a carpet on the floor. I feel a bit sad about the nice big room that I lost. And I am still upset because of the fear I felt.
Then there is another fragment. I am sitting on the couch in the psychiatrist’s room. She is asking me detailed questions about my physical symptoms and re-experiences. It is painful to answer but I try as well as I can. Then suddenly she leaves. I feel far away and in pain and I lay curled up on the floor. I wait until she will come back so we can make an appointment for the next meeting. But then the next patient comes in, a former classmate from high school. I am surprised to see her and I feel ashamed to be here myself, I try to behave as normally as I can, acting. I see people observing me and thinking: “Well, she really can behave normally, she doesn’t have to be so withdrawn.” My former classmate enthusiastically tells me about some education she is going to get, and I am jealous of her since she is healthy enough to be able to study.
In the next fragment my former classmate is sitting on the couch and I am on the floor again, far away, as if I am asleep but still able to perceive. The psychiatrist enters, I hope she will make a new appointment with me and finish our meeting. But she doesn’t. She only comes for my classmate and is surprised to see me there. When we talked, she was friendly and warm and understanding, but now she isn’t anymore. She makes a sarcastic remark, something like “Look what is laying on the floor there”. She thinks I am annoying and she is not interested in me. She doesn’t pay attention to me and doesn’t make a new appointment.
In the next fragment I am with her in another room. The hospital is a school, too. I would like to study at the university but I feel I have no right to try, since I will not be able to do that. When the psychiatrist asks me I say “I can’t, I am crazy”. And I feel desperate and sad. But she says I will be able to do it.
—
In a dream I try to talk with my father and confront him with my memories of abuse. He not only laughs at me, he plainly is completely indifferent to how I feel and what I went through. His reaction is cold, harsh, cynical, cruel and sadistic, and he is only interested in himself. Then he touches me and holds me and I can’t escape. He holds me and with a cruel grin, cold and selfish, he tickles me and I feel like I’m dying of despair since I can’t make him stop and I can’t free myself. Although he doesn’t physically hurt me, inside, emotionally, it hurts horribly and I wake up terrified and feel torn apart. Horribly powerless and humiliated, a denial of who I am, my boundaries trampled.
—
A nightmare in which I am terrified of a thunderstorm that is my father. Thunder and lightning. The thunderstorm is my father, he is some kind of god who is shedding lightning and thunder over me. I try to find a safe place where I am protected, and fortunately there are more people in the house and this helps. But nevertheless I wake up terrified.
Now and then I have nice dreams, dreams in which I can play the flute well and people appreciate this. Dreams of skating, the great feeling of flying over the ice, wholly engrossed in the rhythm of the movement and the speed. To my surprise — I don’t remember I trained for it — I win a medal at the Olympic Games on the 1500 meters speed skating.
My body
In the same period, autumn 1997, I realize that I really am a stranger to my own body and that it is important to learn to know it. Also, I suddenly realize that discovering my body has to do with feeling what I feel — and not with what I should feel but don’t feel. I cry when I become aware of this. It seems I don’t feel what other people do feel in their bodies — but what I don’t feel can’t be the starting point for my exploration.
I decide to first put up a large mirror in my bathroom. The mirror used to hang there, but I removed it because I only felt empty and unreal when I saw myself. For years, the mirror has stood in some dark corner. But this day, I put it up again.
Then I undress and look at myself. I am surprised. I find myself beautiful! Astonished and with pleasure I look at myself and love myself, love my body. This is totally new and wonderful. I had always hated my body, I found it ugly, I felt disgust. I never could accept my body, much less appreciate it. But now I can. I cry terribly and watch and watch and watch….
The tears keep on coming, while I realize how long I have hated my own body. All that time, I have been good and beautiful, but I didn’t know. I realize it is terrible that my body has been “taken away” from me for so many years… I feel intense grief about all the things that have been done to me, that have made me think I am ugly, that made me dislike my body, that made me think my body was to blame for what happened to me — at this moment I feel that is not true. I love myself and I enjoy seeing my body in the mirror. I find my body beautiful and I feel people may see me, and I can touch myself without becoming empty.
The days and weeks after this experience I notice I have much more energy than usual. And although it goes up and down, in the next months I feel remarkably well. The fatigue that has troubled me for so long is almost gone, I have more energy, I can do more, I sleep better, and even after the occasional bad night, I still have more energy than I used to. I enjoy having more energy, I can do more of the things I really like to do without having to force myself, the normal daily activities don’t exhaust me anymore, I can do more things that feel meaningful. I love being active. I still do not function totally normally, but the improvement is remarkable and I am happy with it. And there are even days that I almost have the feeling of functioning “normally”.
Looking back, I think that the disgust with my body that I always felt, and my attempts to ignore my body, have taken a lot of my energy. For so many years I have tried to “live without a body” (and the “body psychotherapy” even made this worse, although it pretended to make me live “in my body”) and now this is not necessary anymore. I notice how much more energy I have, now that I made peace with my body, now that I find my body beautiful and good, now that I acknowledge that it’s not my body’s fault what happened in the past. I experience that I can live “with” my body and this is radically different.
I still have hard moments, and days that I don’t feel good, and nights that I don’t sleep. But most of the time, there is a clear and constant improvement in my situation. I can live a far more active life.
What keeps me busy in therapy is my unfamiliarity with, and fear for, sexual feelings. I talk about it with a friend, and she says that sex, good sex, is a bit like cuddling. I feel a bit reassured when she says that — since I like to cuddle. Sometimes I have dreams about nice sexual feelings, and this reassures me as well. It seems that those feelings are still somewhere, although I can’t find them when I am awake.
An ordinary life
Step by step my sleeping improves. Strangely enough, it happens less and less that I sleep on, but falling asleep is much better. I don’t lay awake for hours anymore. I fall asleep when I go to bed, and when I wake up during the night I fall asleep again. Most of the time, I sleep for seven or eight hours at night, waking up about every two or three hours. This way, I get enough sleep to feel fit. For the first time in more than twenty years, I get enough sleep. Since I can function well this way, I no longer try to sleep without a break. As it is, it is good enough. I am doing less and less therapy. Daily life, with activities that I like, takes more and more of my attention, time and energy. This is possible now, and I enjoy it enormously. This is why I did this therapy.
I know I did not yet solve all of my problems, some of them remain. But about ninety percent of my problems have been solved by now. What remains are my problems with sleeping on, with frequently feeling that I am bad or guilty, avoiding television and movies since I can’t stand anything that is about murder or cruelty or sex. And problems with sexual feelings. I can have some sexual feelings, for a little while — and then some door within is shut, my body starts to feel empty, and I get so much stress that I can’t sleep the night afterwards.
I hope that the problems that I still have will gradually improve. Or that I can find a way to deal with them in the therapy later. Anyhow, at this moment I don’t want to invest all my energy in therapy anymore, and I also feel that this would not work at this moment. In the therapy, I really tried to do something about the problems I still have, but I didn’t succeed. Maybe I will find a good starting point for solving these problems in the future. Anyhow, I just want to live now. Just a normal, daily life. I long so much for that and I enjoy it so much.
I have energy for activities during the day. I enjoy my Psychology study at the Open University. The subject is interesting and I see that studying works well for me. I like to do it and my grades are very well. I gives me more self-confidence. I am not at all stupid!
I say goodbye to the day-nursery where I have worked with pleasure for many years. I start working three days a week at Victim Services, an organization that offers help to people who are the victim of a crime or of a traffic accident. It is a new challenge that I look forward to — and that I have energy for.
I like the work at Victim Services. The training that I get, on the theoretical background and about communication, is interesting. The contact with my colleagues feels good and inspiring.
At first, I am afraid that the work may bring up many of my own fears and past, and will therefore be too hard for me. But that turns out better than I expected.
I notice my fear for men has become much less, I start looking around, I see men whom I like and even talk with them — which is new and unknown to me. I want to do something with my longing for a relationship. When I look at my usual daily activities, I realize that I do not meet any new people there. I don’t get the chance to meet a man with whom I could have a relationship.
So, where can I find men? The Saturday newspaper contains a lot of personal ads, from people who are looking for a partner, and I decide to buy a newspaper and look at those messages (the period of Internet dating has not yet started). I read a lot of sympathetic messages. Messages from, it seems, nice men. I write some letters and this leads to some meetings, some nice and some less nice.
During these meetings, I sometimes run into old fear and pain, and I try as much as possible to process these. I hope that this will lead to what I want to achieve: being able to have a relationship. When I have sleepless nights I doubt whether this is a realistic goal, but I don’t give up. Some meetings are really nice — but they don’t lead to a relationship. Sometimes a contact seems to be developing into a relationship — then in the end it doesn’t. Pity, but it was worth trying.
Some meetings are unpleasant. Not always do I handle that properly, but I’m learning. I learn that I am not required to answer when someone asks me questions. I learn that I myself may choose which and how much to reveal about myself. I learn by experience not to trust everyone. I learn to take my feelings seriously. I learn not to think that it might become nice later, when on a first date it doesn’t feel good. I learn to say “no” to people who are nice but with whom I certainly will never have a relationship. More and more do I learn to say “no” — one of the hardest things for me to do.
Then I meet someone whom I really like. A nice, wise, intelligent, quiet man with a good sense of humor — and I fall in love with him. For some time, we only see each other in the weekends — David lives at the other side of the country, so we have to travel a lot to see each other. It feels good to be together, to love each other. It is a special, new experience for me. David and I make plans to live together.
A stupid, small car accident with a blow to my head puts a spanner in the works. It looks like a concussion — I have a headache, I’m nauseous, I can’t stand noise and light. But it doesn’t get better. My family doctor sends me to a neurologist. He can’t find any neurological problems (my knee reflex and other reflexes are OK, I could have told him that beforehand…). The neurologist says I do not have a concussion, and so “I don’t have a physical problem, it is just a psychological problem”. Well, I do have a lot of experience with mental problems causing physical diseases, but I am very sure that now I have a physical problem. It isn’t a concussion, so what is it?
Since I am not able to fend for myself, I stay with David. His family doctor finds out what’s wrong: there is a problem with dislocation of the vertebrae in my neck. A physiotherapist gets the vertebrae in the right place again, the muscles around them calm down, and my symptoms disappear. The whole illness takes almost a year, but I am fine again. And in the meantime, David and I have started living together.
My biggest wish comes true: I am pregnant. A small human being is growing in my womb. I am intensely happy. Thomas is born in 2001, a healthy, beautiful boy. A miracle. I am a mother. Thomas, David and I are a family. Although not everything goes well, I am very, very happy. I enjoy taking care of Thomas, to carry him with me in a sling, I enjoy breastfeeding him, hearing his contented sounds while being nursed. I enjoy singing songs for him, to watch him playing with David, to hear him laugh, to see his eagerness to explore the world, to comfort him when he cries. I love Thomas. Being with the three of us is wonderful.
All my fighting and struggling did help. It was hard, but it was worth it. I feel deeply thankful to Alice Miller, to Konrad Stettbacher and to Jean Jenson — and also I feel grateful towards myself. I am alive, I am healthy, I have a husband whom I love and a child whom I love. This is what I did it for, and I did it well.
I want to live 