More therapy homework

Power/control

The men who raped and assaulted me were demonstrating their power or control over me. They took away my power. I couldn't fight back. Now I feel like I have no control over my life. I feel helpless. Because I feel like I have no power, I am afraid of people in general. I feel vulnerable to the whole world. I have no control over my life. I am afraid to leave my home, so many decisions are taken away from me. I am afraid to be around people, so many decisions are taken away from me. I am afraid of loud noises, so many decisions are taken away from me. I feel weak, I feel I have to hide. So many of my decisions are taken away, and I have no choices. It makes me angry at myself for being so powerless.

Safety

I don't feel safe. I used to be able to feel safe around people, but not since the rapes. People are dangerous, or at least have the potential to be dangerous. I take steps to help myself feel safe, but nothing really helps. I feel afraid if I don't take those steps, even though they don't work. I sleep with a knife and a teddy bear to help me feel safe enough to fall asleep. I don't feel safe outside of my home. Even when Jon is with me I don't really feel safe. Jon is a comfort to me, because I feel safe when I am alone with him. He tries to look out for me and help me feel safe when we are out of the house. Jon doesn't see danger everywhere like I do, and doesn't believe me about some of the dangers. This makes me angry and frustrated. I know some of the dangers that I see are greatly exaggerated, but others feel like they are legitimate. The world is not a safe place. People are not safe.

Trust

I don't trust people. I particularly don't trust people in positions of authority, because my squad leader raped me and took advantage of me. I believe people in authority abuse their position and hurt others. It takes a long time for me to become comfortable around an individual, and even longer for me to stop waiting for them to do something to hurt me in one way or another. I also don't feel like I can trust myself, I can't trust my judgment because I am always afraid. I feel like it is safer to mistrust everyone to protect myself from being hurt. I feel paranoid about people. I'm always on my guard around people I don't know, and it is exhausting. I was surrounded by enemies in Iraq, even the other soldiers were my enemies, and I still feel like that sometimes.

Self-esteem

I don't feel good about myself. I can't trust my own judgment. I hide in my own home and don't eat well, or exercise. I don't like the way I look. I feel like people don't like me. I am ashamed that I had sex with people in Iraq for protection from the people who raped me. I feel weak, and I don't like myself for feeling weak. I get angry at myself. I have trouble concentrating and it makes me feel stupid. I know I don't behave appropriately around people all the time because of my fear, and that makes me feel ashamed. I forget to shower, and brush my teeth, and change clothes, and that makes me ashamed. I feel like there is no place in the world for me, so it is easier to hide at home.

Intimacy

I have a hard time getting close to other people. Jon and I, established a very emotionally intimate bond very quickly, because I was very open with him when we first met. I don't feel like I can make friends, because of my fear. I feel like if I let people get close to me, then they will hurt me. I worry people think badly of me. I don't understand people. I don't even feel like I am a real person most of the time. Watching people feels like I'm studying an alien race. I just don't understand. I don't like to let myself be vulnerable around people. I don't like to feel judged.  

Damn it all

Lord what a mess. My life seems to be a sequence of ever increasing crisis'. My anxiety is running a muck. Not the least of it is because of therapy. I am starting to feel like a punching bag again. Nightmares are back naturally. At least with the prolonged exposure therapy I started seeing progress right away. It gave me a certain limited freedom from my agoraphobia. I still have to have someone I trust with me in order to leave the house, but at least I CAN leave. I'm less terrified of the panic attacks now. I'm willing to try to make an effort, in a small way at least, to leave home.

This new therapy thing is going to be the worst sort of hell imaginable. Already my mind is consumed with these memories that are pure torture. Can't stop thinking about the rapes and the assault. I'm constantly on edge, anxious. Non-stop panic attacks. It's exhausting. You can imagine my resentment when my therapist told me I had to write a paper entitled "Why I was raped". How stupid can you be?

A paper I had to write for therapy

Why I was raped

I was raped because I was the only female assigned to an infantry unit. I was raped because everyone was angry and frustrated because soldiers in our unit kept dying. I was raped because I was on outsider and nobody cared what happened to me. I was raped because there was no one to protect me. I was assaulted once because the soldier wanted to humiliate me. I was assaulted other times, because they were stronger than me and didn't think I would fight back.

I was raped because I was not in control of the situation. I was raped because they wanted to use me. I was raped because people I thought I could trust took advantage of their position. I was raped because I was told that I had to get along with the infantry no matter what. I was raped because I was told that I couldn't cause trouble or I wouldn't be able to do my job because the infantry wouldn't trust me. I was raped because they made me to feel powerless, helpless. I was raped once because I was drugged. I was violated and humiliated and furious. I had no one I could trust. I felt alone. I believed I was going to die in Iraq and I stopped caring. I stopped wanting to survive, and hoped I would die to make it all stop.

I had sex with people I didn't want to in order to gain a “protector”, because the infantry doesn't poach other soldier's girlfriends. I don't like myself for that.

I learned that people cannot be trusted. I learned the depths of human depravity, and now I can't see people without remembering the evils that men are capable of. I learned that I am never really safe. I was afraid to sleep for a long time, because I was afraid I would wake up and someone would be touching me or raping me. Once I was out on mission and I woke up and a soldier had put his hands under my clothes and under my bra and was fondling me and apparently he fell asleep like that. I learned that there is no point in crying although sometimes you can't help it, because it always makes you feel worse, makes you feel weak. I learned to be afraid of people touching me. I don't believe someone will be there to help me if something like that happens again. I learned to be afraid to say no to sex. I had to keep going on my missions no matter what happened. I was good at my job, but I hated having to be around the infantry. No one cared about me. No one helped me, and even when they tried I was afraid to report the rapes and the assaults. I was afraid to be thought weak, so I was angry all the time to protect myself.

Shame and guilt. Fear and anger. Always feeling alone. They tried to punish me for not subjecting myself to sexual assault by an Iraqi man. I had a screaming match about it with one of my “bosses”. I hate that man so much. The “boss” not the Iraqi. I tried to get the “boss” to help me but he wouldn't. He told me to do whatever I had to in order to make that person help us. The commander on that mission told me if I couldn't handle doing my job to go wait in the truck. I went and waited in the truck and felt humiliated and ashamed for not getting the job done, but I wasn't going to let some Iraqi man touch me that way. I wanted to shoot that guy dead, but he had valuable information we needed.

Always I felt that rules were against me, made me unable to protect myself. No one helped me when I needed it the most, and so now I know that when things get that bad, I have only myself. I have Jon now, but I still don't trust people of authority. I really don't trust anyone very much. I don't like people. No one understands what I went through, and even my boyfriend doesn't really understand what I am going through now. How afraid I am all the time. How I can't stop thinking about these terrifying things. How I can't stop remembering it all. When I remember I'm filled with anger that is so intense I feel like I will die if I don't get it all out. And still, I feel so alone most of the time. I feel like I'm lost in the desert with no one around for hundreds of miles, and no one is coming to save me.  

The road to hell

Sweet Christ, will it never end? Therapy day yesterday turned into a shit storm of epic proportions. I had a nice conversation with my psychiatrist about how I'm fighting my depression the hard way. With fists and teeth and kicks and claws instead of with the drugs, which were causing my anxiety to get worse.

Three years of agoraphobia and I have gotten used to coddling myself. Anything to keep my head above water, one day at a time, one foot in front of the other etc. etc. I worked my ass off in Prolonged Exposure Therapy to get a grip on my panic attacks. I endured the worst torments of hell to gain some measure of control. I still HAVE panic attacks, but they don't have me if you follow me.

Since then I've been sort of, adrift. Letting shit slide, if you feel me. I nosh on comfort food, and read and read and read until reality is far enough away that it can't quite get me in its grip. I suppose I may have grown a bit complacent, leaving a way for the depression to sneak in and get its hooks in deep. I have a hard time focusing on what is real and right in front of me. I digress.

Enter the fucking social worker, my actual therapist. She jumped my shit about missing appointments (as if the meaning of "agoraphobia" had temporarily escaped her), and then insinuated that I didn't really want to get better. She suggested that I try a residential treatment program out of state, which instantly triggered a grand mal panic attack. Then she wouldn't let me leave her office, while I was busy freaking out. She made snide comments and was generally a pain in my ass. Her posture, tone of voice, and turn of phrase all suggested some hostility. At any rate when I was finally home and sedated, my boyfriend called, and the wretch said I must have misunderstood her. She ought to know better than to fuck with the crazy people.

At any rate, I called my dad freaking out, and he slammed my ass about going into the treatment program, and I just wasn't ready to hear it. He worries about me being stuck at home all the time alone. It isn't good for me, I know that, but what the hell else can I do? Then my dad called my fucking brother who wanted to talk to me about the program, so I had another panic attack, and thanks dad for making shit harder on me than it already is. I asked dad to back off and give me time to think about it, but now half the family knows the VA wants to lock me up out of state for three months and everybody is "concerned" and wants to talk to me about it. So I spent half of today sedated as well, and I'm stressed and have a headache from clenching my teeth all the time.

It pissed me off that the social worker so easily dismissed the efforts I have been making to get the depression under control. It pisses me off that she suggested that I didn't want to get better. It pisses me off that my dad thinks the VA will or ought to take away my disability if I don't go to the damn treatment program. In the words of the wordslinger Stephen King "Every hand is against me now."

God save me from good intentions. Everybody just wants to help, and I just want to throttle them all. The insidious whispers of depression beckon me to hide in bed and cuddle my teddy bear and let the world go to hell in its own way. I want to scream and scream and scream and never stop til I'm dead.

Keep marching along

I'm so damn tired. The finest depression has to offer. Fatigue. Someone foolish asked me if I saw myself getting better one day. What they meant to ask was, did I want to get better. A silly question. If I try to picture the future I draw a horrible blank. My brain just stops. It's hard enough trying to get through right this moment, without worrying about later. Of course I want to get better, but I don't know what "better" will mean for me. I'm stingy with my wishes lately, because it's best to save them for the next big crisis. "Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never ever jam today."

One foot in front of the other. Today is horrible, and it takes everything I have to survive it. Tomorrow will take care of itself. It's insulting to me that someone suggests even indirectly that I can somehow "will" myself better. People say that I used to be so strong. Yes I remember that too. Young and convinced of my own immortality. I'm not even thirty yet and I feel old. It's hard for me to conceive of another thirty years or more on this planet. Strength is an elastic sort of term. I seem to have lost that core of steel that I used to have buried deep. What I have now is more stubbornness than anything else. I've been kicked in the face too many times by fate to be willing to give up now. I know I can take a damn hard kick and keep my feet. Maybe just barely, and not at all gracefully, but I'm still here. I don't worry too much about the next kick (and as long as I'm still standing there will be another one without question), because I know the depth and breadth of what can be survived, what must be endured. I'm just beating this metaphor to death aren't I? I'm tired. One foot in front of the other and don't worry too much about what comes next. If it kills me, well then I won't have anything left to worry about. If it doesn't kill me, it may not make me stronger, but there are benefits to mortality. Take two pills and call me tomorrow. And don't worry about me, when I can't walk anymore, I'll crawl. I've done it before.

Becoming

Robert Heinlen wrote in Stranger in a Strange Land, that in learning something new you drink it. You take it into yourself, absorb it, allow it to become a part of you, and in doing so, let it change you. He also suggested that you should try to cherish the new information in order to truly understand it.

Therapy has taken a turn for the strange and painful. I'm being forced to try and make changes. I need the change, desperately need it, but I don't cherish it. These last few years have worn a rut into my being. I'm trying to climb out, but it's frustrating and I am strangely resentful of the effort it takes. It would be so much easier to allow that rut to wear itself deeper and deeper into me, until change becomes impossible.

I wake up angry in the morning, and I remain angry until sheer weariness calms me down. Or I take a pill to calm myself down. When all of this began, when I had my breakdown from denying all the trauma for years, I was fiercely determined that I would get better quickly. I had my life planned out, and damned if anything was going to keep me from it. After years of this purgatory of therapy, I no longer have any idea what my life is going to be. I have no plan. I've been distracting myself from the fear, depression, anger, and despair maniacally for these past years. Anything to keep from being overwhelmed by the vastness of my troubles. I feel curiously blank. All my wants are pro forma. I have learned not to hope, not to expect, and to only deal with the most immediate events. Most discussions of the future are a pretense on my part, because I cannot relate to any sense of the future. It's as though the future doesn't apply to me. This behavior is all a defense mechanism of course. Survival is my singular concern.

Making changes is tough. I have to try to care, instead of merely pretending. I feel like I need some sort of spiritual quest or task or some such nonsense, to kick start my motivation. A vision quest maybe? A glimpse of the future to assure myself that such a thing exists. I am skeptical. If I had some secret true name, it would be something like "cynic" or "skeptic".

I'm tired.

Pay the piper

Everything good, you can lose. Anything that is bad can happen at any time. At least in my nightmares nothing new that is bad happens. New bad things only happen when I am awake. I live in constant fear of losing the good in my life to some new evil. Everything that gives me hope is suspect. I only want peace and quiet, and to be left mostly alone. I can't function any better than to keep most of my fears at bay when I am awake. The day to day minutiae of living escapes me entirely, because I am too busy trying to stay sane. I escape. I survive. I lose myself in fiction, reading or writing, because stories have a beginning and a tidy ending. To be a survivor is a terrible thing. There is no triumph in it. There is exhaustion, grief, tears, fear, and terrible prices to pay for survival. But no triumph. Not so far any way. The battles are over, the war is won, but we who have survived must pay the terrible cost of continuing to survive. A price that has to be paid continually, forever without mercy. No one can pay this price for us or ease the terrible burden. Who would suffer my nightmares for me? Who would live with these awful memories that I do not want?