Enigma87

@LisaButterfly I am in agreement with Sandy12 ❤️ I absolutely love the way you express your thoughts and feelings! This was very heartwarming to read. I look forward to reading more of your blog entries as you share them. I appreciate you being here also! Sending you support and safe hugs also.

@Poppy_ Aw, I’m so glad you have come back 😊❤️❤️ Sending you safe hugs to welcome you back!

Hello @Maryphanalia It's awesome to meet you! Welcome to AS! I’m glad you have joined and I hope you (and maybe your friend) will find this community to be supporting and comforting as I have found it to be. Also, I saw your pots and craft work on the most recent healing and creativity post! Beautiful work! I'd love to see more. 😊💕

Aw @abhaya 😢 ❤️❤️❤️ Your message is so touching. This is really sweet of you to be thinking so deeply of “us”, while you yourself are experiencing such painful feelings and memories. Although I cannot speak for everyone, I’m sure many here are “extremely” appreciative of the heartfelt expressions you have made and the constant support you have given. I personally have enjoyed your expressions and getting to know you thus far. However, I agree with what feralcat and seong98 have said. Please remember to listen to, and take care of yourself as first priority. Maneuvering through difficult memories and feelings that you have been accustomed to suppressing or dissociating from is extremely difficult! So please, please, be gentle and kind with yourself, as I’m sure you would be, and have been with many of us already. Also please remember, your AS family is here, and will be here, when you need us. As you have told me, you are deserving and worthy of support and kindness. I am also here if you want/need to talk. I am more than willing and happy to sit with you, if okay? Also, sending you a ton of support and care. 💕💕💕

Yes! This is exactly what I go through... I'm so sorry you go through these feelings too. 💔 Aw, thank you friend. I always have the urge to delete things, but I always try to wait the feeling out and avoid it. This makes me feel good to hear you say that. 💕 Thank you so much for saying this too. I really needed to hear this. No you weren't preachy at all. I will PM you what my religion is, if that is okay. I'm still scared to say it on forums. Maybe one day.

@abhaya Thank you for saying all of this. I really appreciate it more than you know. I still go back and forth about everything. Today has been a day where I just want to delete things in my posts or hide my blog. I just feel so exposed and ashamed. It’s like I want to undo the purging of my story everywhere. I still can’t share my story in the “story” forum. It feels too official there. I still don’t really know what all is my story. I just keep random memories and details in my blog so I can delete or hide it. Yea, kind of. No details were shared with the public. I only shared “minimal” details of what happened with the man online with the 3 elders that counseled me, my parents, and my sister. They listened and didn’t say too much more about it. It’s hard to explain. The only SA they know of is the assault from the minister since he was reported by someone else. Everything else... they have no clue. I generally like my religion. It’s just very different and we are expected to live by high standards. So it can be hard sometimes when I feel more sinful or defective in comparison to most in my religion. I’m trying to work through my feelings about it all though. Thank you for your kind words as always. ❤️

@Zoe--Anastasia I’m so glad sharing my experience could be of some help to you. I hope your day is going better. My DBT treatment plan consists of: 1) having an individual session with a DBT-trained T, attending a group session (of maybe 5-10 ppl) that are also in the DBT program, and using coaching calls from my individual T in between, as I need them. The whole focus is on using the skills we learn to effectively manage relationships with others, cope with pain/distress, and regulate our emotions. In the skills group class we have workbooks, and homework, and are taught: mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a type of exposure therapy that involves ‘bilateral stimulation’ of the brain while holding a memory in mind, together with the feelings, sensations, emotions and beliefs connected to it. It helps you overcome the effects of trauma. Here’s a forum topic here on AS that has more information: I’m sorry you haven’t had the best experiences with medication. They do feel like they can be counterproductive sometimes! I also was put on Zoloft at first. Even though it did seem to help with my symptoms, I had tremors with it. So after some time, my psychiatrist decided to have me switch to Wellbutrin XL, and it seems to be working I guess. But I agree, if you can find other natural ways of relieving your symptoms, then that is so much better! I wish you the best ❤️ I’m glad my rambling made you feel better haha. Yes, it is always comforting to know others can relate. You made me feel less alone too! I was literally laying in bed feeling like I cannot be helped and I should stop trying to get better. But I think we can get in our way sometimes. DBT is very hard stuff. Don’t underestimate the hard work that goes into it. I have felt the same way at times where I feel like I’m just not getting it, or that I will never be “skillful” enough. But my T says it will take time and effort. She always reminds me to think of how long it took me to develop these habits or the seriousness of my past, and to be compassionate with myself in accepting that it may take some time to recondition myself to use skills in place of the harmful coping mechanisms I have used for so long. So although it does take some level of willingness and determination, please be gentle and patient with yourself. It’s hard stuff. I’m so sorry for the CSA you experienced. 💔I can see why you would feel the need to lie, pretend, ignore and lie to keep yourself safe. No child should have to live that way. I get that feeling when it comes to avoiding making my parents (moreso my dad) mad as a kid. I did the same to avoid a beating or whipping. I’m sorry you’ve been struggling with working too. That’s where I am right now. I’m trying to have some sort of routine or work schedule but my depression keeps me from being fully engaged. It’s frustrating. An Intensive Outpatient Program isn’t a bad idea if you feel it could be helpful for you. I was in back in 2016. It lasted a month and it was the beginning of my mental health journey. I’m glad I did it. However, only you can make that decision, and possibly with the help or advice of your T. Ha... This statement you made resonated with me: ”I love to hate myself and I do it often.” I do the same thing. My T asks me at the end of every session, “So what are you going to do for your self-care this week?” I hate that question lol. But it’s really important. I’ve also found mindfulness and certain guided meditations about self-compassion to be soothing too, when I am willing to do them that is. Anyway, I really hope things improve for your and that you continue to reach out here to us for support! We are glad you are here. I am here if you ever want to message me! Still sitting with you and sending safe hugs if you want them! ❤️❤️

@abhaya I'm so sorry you have experienced this too. It's so hard to make sense of. I hope your new sense of awareness is bringing you some relief somehow. I'm just now coming to terms with my abuse this year really, at 33. I couldn't even bring myself to call the things that happened to me "abuse" or anything that makes me feel victimized. I can write the words down here 'barely', but cannot say them out loud. I just knew these were situations I didn't want to happen, but they did, and I just thought I need to move on and learn from it. But I am learning it doesn't work like that. I kept my sexual experiences so private that I ended up carrying a sense of shame with it. I would act/feel free and liberated in those moments that I became that alter ego, or other person. But then I would shift right back to the quiet, respectable and straight-laced version of me for the public and carry this guilt for being secretive of my sexual sins. TW!!! - I had smaller incidents happen when I was younger before my teacher that I am also understanding were wrong, but I think he was the one to have the most impact on me. My teacher over the years would tease me for being a closeted freak, and say he took credit for bringing out the passionate sexual side of me. 🤢 But then he would also threaten me with it, saying how everyone would judge me if they knew how dirty I really was. During and after my situation with my teacher, I did go through a rebellious phase in my late teens, but it was still only with my peers who were also rebelling. I kept it hidden from plain sight from most everyone else. My family and religious community still looked at me as the golden girl of a religious leader. But that is what got me in trouble with the minister when I was 22. He was from out of town, and knew one of the girls I came with that night. We all were living what we call 'double lives' in my religion. He was older, had privileges within the congregation in his hometown (under the same religion), and could see I was living one way for my father in front of the public, and then another way, rebelling and struggling on the inside. So he used that against me and basically taught me a lesson by drugging my drink and SAing me, saying I was asking for it... because I wanted to rebel and be defiant. So I have blamed myself for years for letting him see that side of me, and using it to hurt me so badly. He's been excommunicated since after other girls came forward. Then, time after time, I kept dating men within my religion that had some level of notoriety in the religion, but were abusive behind closed doors - like my father. Two of my boyfriends SA'ed me off and on. After my last serious relationship, I had a breakdown, tried to get my life together, but was r*ed again the very next year by another guy in my religion I barely knew after a party one night. That was a little over 3 years ago. Then men in my dad's circle, have been forward with me also, and it feel like there has been nothing I could do about it. It's as if they can tell I'm hiding something and they push boundaries, as if they're testing me to sin, knowing I won't tell because I have too many secrets, don't want to make a scene, and don't want to jeopardize my father's position. I feel that's what has always haunted me... trying to keep face. When underneath, I often feel like am crumbling inside. I just confessed a sin a month ago, that publicly shamed me and my family. It was something totally out of character for me. I confessed it because I genuinely felt bad and wanted God's forgiveness, and because I was tired of being perfect. Either out of self harm, or release, I wanted everyone to know I am not perfect and have been struggling. Now, although I am a bit relieved, I am left with a measure of shame and judgement, and am still struggling to handle it all. Sorry, I feel like I word vomited... a lot of this came out as I was typing, and I don't think I want to delete it... yet. This is so the opposite of me in real life. I am like a vault that very few know about.

@abhaya Yea... you hit the nail on the head. Thank you for sitting with me on this. TW: That’s why it’s been so hard to consider the situation with my teacher “abuse”. He was 33 & I was 14 when we got close, and 15 when he first touched me. He was intimidating, and had a certain kind of control over me, but I still cared about him, believed him, and kept coming back to him. I liked him, but didn’t want all the sexual stuff to begin with. It shocked me and made me nauseous. But I did it because I felt like this is part of what made us close. Idk... As time progressed, I was afraid that I would be in trouble too, and didn’t want anyone to find out the shameful things we did. I felt like I had a problem and was addicted to him or something, even when I didn’t want to be. Like I had an alter ego specific to giving into doing things with him. This version of me would come out when things became overwhelming and confusing and especially, when he was ignoring me saying no or stop. I’d either freeze and blank out, or shift into this playful primal role, if that description makes any sense. Now that I’m older, it’s sickening to think back to. But I still struggle with freeze and/or that “alter ego shift” even as a young adult when I feel pressure or anxiety in sexual situations. So it’s so hard to put all the blame on him when I know what I did with him. Sorry that response was longer than I expected it to be. 😬 Sitting with you too ❤️