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    • #159743
      velvet-ribbon
      Participant

      Hi,

      I’m starting some counselling soon after being on a waiting list a very long time. I’m also being assessed for PTSD soon. I’m so tired and now nearly half my life has been feeling like this. One of the most difficult things is the cognitive dissonance. Things that are in my memory, and in my experiences personally with this person vs everyone else’s including our children.
      I’ve been thinking for a while it might be helpful to write my story anonymously. Partly so it is out there and to make it real. I want to forget but also I don’t want to at the same time. I even feel angry that I have forgotten some details. Don’t know if this is normal.
      Has anyone used any online platform for writing anything like this, or can recommend anything please?

      Thank you for reading.

    • #159776
      Twisted Sister
      Participant

      Hello velvet-ribbon

      Its good to hear you are away from the abuse, but yes it can take a long time, and many different approaches to help you heal. I hear that many do find journaling helpful for many reasons, but in our situations your main consideration would be safety, both from your story being recognised (which would mean having to alter a lot of it, especially where there is any court detail), but also your own sense of safety in putting out what is often very intimate passages of our lives, that once online cannot be withdrawn totally, anyone can keep copies of things posted on-line. Your own sense of safety is just as important that you write stuff you know you are happy to have out there and can cope with personally being shared openly.

      Maybe do your own hand-written journal, something personal to you, find a journal that you can decorate in your preferred style?

      You’ll know once you starting writing and then going back to it whether you are comfortable in doing this, or are finding it helpful. There are some very sick people online, so I would be very wary of your story falling into the wrong hands.

      Warmest wishes

      ts

    • #159793
      pigeonperson
      Participant

      A word of caution: I started writing an online blog because I thought it would be beneficial to me and others. Maybe it still will, but writing posts for it wiped me out emotionally and I was having pretty bad anxiety, insomnia, PTSD symptoms. I didn’t know if writing the blog and the symptoms were connected, because there were other triggers, but I think it made me feel worse not better. Whereas writing events and feelings when the abuse was happening kept me sane. Also writing on actual paper seems a lot more therapeutic for some reason.

      Not everyone is the same obviously, but that’s my experience.

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