How to deal with abuse memories that occasionally come up for no reason.

[Spice_Weasel]

@Rachellelogram

Absolutely. My only qualifier to this is: there’s a time and place for everything. Talk/work things out in therapy, absolutely. Take 30 minutes every day to practice your CBT techniques, definitely. When you’re trying to fall asleep or get through your workday or drive home without crashing the car, though, avoidance is appropriate.

Agreed. Those are the best times for distraction - try to focus on something soothing or positive. If all else fails, take an Atavan. (At least, that’s what I do.)

[Ostrya]

@olivesmarch4th

Cashew, I respect your experiences and this in no way means to invalidate them. But I have to respond to this, because I think it’s very dangerous advice. I have researched this subject and I have personal experience with treatments based on trauma theory.

As I mentioned upthread, a key driving force behind PTSD is the avoidance of painful memories, thoughts and experiences. It is a scientifically established fact (borne out by over 100 years of research) that repeated exposure to a given stimulus (in this case, a memory) will decrease the anxiety associated with that stimulus. In other words, your memories can’t kill you, they can’t hurt you, they aren’t dangerous, they aren’t to be avoided. They are painful - sometimes it may seem unbearably so - but the more you relive or recall those experiences, the less frightening they will be.

I experienced this myself through prolonged exposure therapy, which had dramatic (and I mean DRAMATIC) and immediate effects on my symptoms. I need to emphasize that this should ONLY be done with the guidance of a trained professional, because if you do it wrong, it can totally backfire and make everything worse. In the therapy, you recall those memories and relive them over and over and over until you are sick to goddamn death of them and they don’t frighten you any more. By ‘‘over and over’’ I mean for 2 hours a day for three months straight. I had to speak my memories aloud, in vivid detail. It hurts like hell at first. I screamed, I bawled, I hyperventilated… but I survived. And I stopped panicking as I went through it again. And eventually I got bored and moved on to a different memory. And now those experiences don’t have nearly the same power over me that they once did. I can now relate most of my life story, traumatic experiences included, without feeling particularly upset about it. I can be reminded of my abuse without it ruining my entire day.

People tend to react with horror to the concept of prolonged exposure because one figures it must be a bad thing to deliberately upset yourself. ''Why," people have asked me, “Would you want to relive all that over and over again?”

“Don’t you get it? I’ve already been reliving it over and over again - every day for the last 10 years. It’s really not going to kill me to do it for three more months.”

I really can’t emphasize this enough - **AVOIDANCE WILL MAKE PTSD WORSE.
**

I think you’re making things more complicated if we’re talking about reliving the same memories over and over again. What I said was true, and by reliving them over and over again, they might not ever go away.

[Spice_Weasel]

@the lone cashew

I think you’re making things more complicated if we’re talking about reliving the same memories over and over again. What I said was true, and by reliving them over and over again, they might not ever go away.

If by ‘‘making things more complicated’’ you mean ‘‘basing my opinion on research in addition to personal experience,’’ then yes. But really, there is nothing that complicated about it. Avoiding painful memories reinforces the fear we have of those painful memories. Avoidance leads to increased anxiety. Avoidance makes PTSD worse. In fact, it’s even more fundamental than that - PTSD is, by its very nature, a dysfunction of stimulus avoidance. PTSD would not exist without avoidance behavior. That is because trying to suppress a thought or response will inevitably lead to that thought or response appearing more frequently in a way that feels totally out of control for the sufferer.

National Center for PTSD: Page Not Found - 404 Error - PTSD: National Center for PTSD

Effective Treatment for PTSD: http://www.drwilliamkoch.com/ptsd3.doc

“Most experts in the CBT treatment of PTSD believe that two changes are necessary for PTSD clients to show clinical improvement. The first necessary change is reduced avoidance behavior. Avoidance behavior may be overt (e.g., reduced driving in cars, avoidance of men in women with rape-related PTSD), or covert (avoidance of memories). The “reliving” exercise described above is meant to reduce covert avoidance and the in vivo exposure exercises are meant to reduce overt avoidance. Overcoming avoidance through exposure exercises is an emotionally-draining task because it requires clients to tolerate high levels of anxiety during treatment in order to reduce the fear response in the long term. Some PTSD clients drop out of therapy during exposure therapy because of difficulty tolerating high levels of arousal. Nonetheless, exposure exercises like these are the first line of treatment for people with PTSD symptoms.”

“The second necessary change for successful treatment is to enable the client to change his/her “appraisals”, which maintain a sense of danger. These appraisals may be about the trauma survivor him/herself. For example, he/she may permanently changed for the worse. Sexual assault victims may feel themselves unworthy to have a rewarding intimate or family life or that they are stigmatized. MVA victims with physical injuries may view their entire lifestyle and self-image to have changed because of trauma-related change in physical functioning. Trauma victims may also feel they are ineffectual in coping or defending themselves, thereby becoming hopeless about positive change in their lives. Very frequently, trauma victims come to believe that certain activities (e.g., car travel, dating men) are much more dangerous than previously assumed, and adopt excessively high levels of vigilance for specific types of threat. Finally, trauma victims are often disappointed in the safety net provided by society. They may come to believe that family, friends, employers, or insurance companies are non-supportive or adversarial. Such cognitive change is not always easy because a number of societal and social influences may reinforce trauma victims’ maladaptive beliefs (e.g., “There are so many bad drivers out there.”, “I can not protect myself.” “No man can be trusted.”).”

For people to get out of this hell, they have to look the devil in the face.

[Spice_Weasel]

Oh, and I wanted to add - you are absolutely right, Floaty, that it’s often hard to discern the line between rumination and avoidance. I really think it’s a trial and error thing. If you’re thinking about something trauma related for hours and hours at a time without feeling any better, that’s probably rumination. For me the biggest warning sign is spending too much time writing about it, or staying up thinking about it until 3am or whatever. Before I was properly treated I got really good at writing all about my past and talking about it and I just numbed myself into a depression rather than really facing the experience fully. There was always a desparation for validation from others, and I never felt better. But for some people, writing might be a very helpful coping mechanism.

[Bam_Boo_Gut]

Interesting - what’s with the car travel thing?

I had a job where I had to drive 20 -30 minutes three times a day. I found I’d hit a certain corner and burst into tears, overloaded with a memory of the traumatic death of a friend, related to an adult episode of abuse, while throughout the journeys I’d be recalled childhood abuse episodes.

Around that time I was at the gynecologist and told him I just couldn’t keep it together anymore. I was telling people I had flu or allergies when in fact I’d been sobbing my heart out on the road. He said I had too many memories bombarding me and prescribed Elavil for three months which would help to block them a bit. It certainly did help take the edge of things, the crying stopped after about two weeks, but at the same time put me in a bit of a floaty state.

[Dogzilla]

@Enola_Gay

Your dad wasn’t trying to teach you any lesson, imo, but was just acting like a childish douche having a tantrum. And you didn’t do anything to deserve it–he was just behaving like an out-of-control toddler, who clearly lacked the maturity to appropriately raise a child.

But hearing stories like yours and the OP’s, makes me really appreciate my parents. But the silver lining in enduring such abuse is that you know exactly how NOT to parent, and if you have children of your own, the cycle will be broken and you can be a better parent because of it.

I agree with your diagnosis and no, I do not have children of my own. And now you know why. My sister, however, does, and she has done a terrific job of making her kids feel safe and secure and seems to have managed to break the cycle. Kudos to her. I didn’t think I could do it.

I am, however, a wonderful dog/cat parent.

[LibrarySpy]

You have my sympathy, FloatGimpy. It sounds like if you’ve had years of therapy and drugs and this is still happening, you haven’t found the right demon to slay. There are thousands of demons. Your mother? Your father? What, exactly, is making you so afraid? Who is judging you and finding you so wanting? As Enola Gay alludes to, the incident probably has little to do with you. And yet, these people messed you up. Are you angry at how you’ve been betrayed?

olivesmarch4th’s advice is solid. I’m getting all of that in my CBT sessions and drugs.

I’ve had some success with anger meditation. I allow myself to get so angry I’m physically out of control, and I allow myself to picture the object of my anger in my mind, strangling him or whatever. The idea is that you’re repressing emotion, memory, and your behavior. Let it come to the surface and escape your body. Rage.

I’m also in a 12 step program that’s enlightening. Maybe there are some women’s groups in your area? Al-Anon, even? As this thread has indicated, it’s really really helpful to know other people are going through this.