counselling…just wanna give up :(

[duvetday]

Hi…I hope it’s ok cos I posted in this topic yesterday..?
So.. I’ve been tryna access some therapy or counselling since June… cos of moving to refuge then moving again from there to my current town, I’ve applied for 3 different nhs services..in one place it came thru and I was so grateful and had a really great counsellor but only got 3 sessions with her cos I moved. In my current place I’m on a wait list which won’t come thru for another 4/5 months. I was gonna give up with trying to access something paid/low cost cos my depression hit pretty hard recently but somehow I managed to find the motivation to contact my local d.abuse service to ask if they knew of any specialist counsellors… Well they found one and gave me the details, which I felt quite excited about. It’s taken a few weeks but I’ve just been able to book an assessment this evening with them which is cool but it’s not for another month and they said there is roughly a 12 week wait after that. W*f…. 🙁 I just wanna cry…. I know I’m lucky that there is even a place I can go to which has a sliding scale payment thing and where they have d.abuse specialist counsellors. I know this. But I just feel defeated at this point. I really feel I need to talk to someone :'( and the thought of waiting another 4 months before I can start…I just don’t know what to do. I’ve been questioning everything- every day I have thoughts that I exaggerated what my ex did…that it wasn’t d.abuse, that he was just “a bit nasty”, has some (detail removed by moderator) traits but isn’t full blown (detail removed by moderator) abuser. I go over and over it in my mind. My friend wrote me this amazing msg, stating clearly that he did abuse me, I’ve taken a screenshot of it and written above it “believe this!” So I can look at it to remind myself but I’m just massively in self doubt mode all the time 🙁 urghhhh… (thanks for reading ♡)

[KIP.]

Massive self doubt is what the abusers make us feel so this is quite normal. It amazes me the way they can behave so outrageously yet carry on making us feel like we are the weird ones. Believe me, I know how you feel. Gaslighting. It might help to go back to the very beginning and write down every piece of abuse and how this made you feel. If you do this with the goal of sharing it with your counsellor, it might make the time go in a little quicker. I had extreme brain chatter for over six months but it didn’t really go away for nearly two years and I still find I have thoughts of self doubt now and again. Mostly I know he was an abuser. Why else are any of us on this website. No one in my circle of friends has ever looked at it. I never knew it existed until my ex was arrested and I got in touch with women’s aid.

[duvetday]

Hi KIP,
Thanks for your reply 🙂 it’s reassuring to know other people feel this self-doubt. It’s obviously not nice to know other people experience it but it makes me feel less alone. My brain finds all sorts of “evidence” that it wasn’t abuse and it’s really annoying cos then I’m in a constant debate in my head trying to convince myself that yep it was abuse (cos I can’t handle the thought that all the things I’ve done like leaving, going to refuge, losing close friendships etc were a mistake/could have been prevented..). Anyway…yeh writing it all down defo helps. I’ve done that before…it was really upsetting but my support worker (at the time) helped me to get down in writing what my ex did in terms of abuse. And actually that reminds me I still have it so I’ll put it somewhere I can easily look at it. x

[SunshineRainflower]

Hi Duvetday,

Again I feel in a really similar siutation. Sometimes I feel embarassed being here thinking ‘maybe it wasn’t really abuse, maybe it wasn’t that bad’ and I feel like I’m this random lonely person trying to blame other people for my life’s problems and still sometimes feel guilty and silly that I went to the police. It really doesn’t help when other people invalidated our experiences, I’m not sure about you but I have had invalidation from several sources which makes you feel terrible even though other people confirm to us ‘yes it was abuse’ etc.

Did you write down a big list of all of the abuse? If so you could put it up on your wall as a daily reminder, I’ve been thinking of doing that myself as I too doubt myself daily.

One thing I’d say about counsellors having recently had a bad experience with one who didn’t understand abuse and ended up making me feel worse is that it’s better to wait for the right counsellor than rush getting the wrong one. Still I agree it is rubbish that we have to wait at all. Could you start your own healing plan before hand such as getting some books out on abuse, journaling every day etc so by the time you have counselling you feel clearer about it and know more what you need to talk about?

[duvetday]

Hey SunshineRainflower,
Yeh I’ve had those exact thoughts! So annoying… 🙁
Yeh you’re right that I can look at it that it’s better to wait for the right counsellor.. I feel so impatient at times and like I just want to be talking to someone about everything..
Yeh I could be doing some of my own healing stuff. I just don’t feel that motivated. But I do write in my diary sometimes which helps. And am doing the freedom programme tho have had a mixed experience of that. x

[SunshineRainflower]

Are you doing the freedom programme online or in a group? I am interested in it but had a bad experience doing another course, some of the women were on drugs and seemed out of it and some were prostitutes and it freaked me out even though I don’t want do be judging people. There was a bad vibe in the room and it just didn’t feel like a healthy atmosphere. The comprehension level was so low that we just spent ages introducing ourselves and people kept hijacking the session so we didn’t actually get through a lot of the material. I had learnt much more from the books I’ve read about abuse and from the ladies on here than I did on this course so not sure there is much point but maybe the online one would be ok as I could do it at my own pace…

[duvetday]

Hey SunshineRainflower,
Sorry to hear about your experience of that group… 🙁 am I right in thinking you did the pattern changing one? A friend of mine did that and had a really good experience so I guess it can really vary.. Yeh my freedom group is in person. I have 3 more sessions to go. I have felt some benefits I guess but due to my personal circumstances I don’t think I got as much out of it as some of the other women.. I should be able to do the recovery toolkit one after which I feel is going to help me more, but I don’t know I guess until I do it.

[Freedomfighter]

Hi Duvetday,
Sorry you’re struggling with counselling too. I had to resort to paying privately, but couldn’t afford many sessions. I was very lucky though, she’s good. There’s no specialist dv counsellor locally, I’d have to travel about 20 miles and again long waiting list. I find the ladies on the helpline are excellent when I’m having bad wobbles. I’ve been married a very long time, abuse has been mentioned on and off for the past (detail removed by Moderator) years. At first I was quite offended. Then as you mentioned I kept convincing myself I must be exaggerating it all in my mind. I actually experienced physical abuse early on in the relationship, but he’d got me very drunk and I passed out. When I woke up I was completely freaked out as you can imagine. He pretended he had no idea what I was talking about. I was so confused. It was the first night of a 2 week holiday. By the end he’d convinced me I’d had a drunken nightmare because I was so scared. He told me the abuse beforehand was a misunderstanding- he thought I was just playing and didn’t really mean no or stop or get off me or I’ll scream which is why he said he had to force half a litre of vodka down my throat. He then got really upset that I was accusing him of attempted rape. Saying I was going to ruin his life over a misunderstanding and he couldn’t believe this was happening and after he paid for my holiday etc saying that I’d agreed to try ‘role play’ so no one would believe me that he’d tried to rape me. Everyone would ‘realise the truth, it was consensual sex but with a misunderstanding’ Not his fault! I was too ashamed, embarrassed and felt I was to partly to blame. I buried the memory because I couldn’t handle it, believed he wouldn’t purposely hurt me etc. He never did anything like that again, another misunderstanding (detail removed by Moderator) months earlier meant we were engaged accidentally, but I didn’t want to upset or embarrass him in front of his parents, then he paid for the expensive (detail removed by Moderator) holiday, gifts and had an image of a good Christian and fundraiser all round good guy. It made no sense
I’ve been doing the whole did he? Didn’t he? Is he evi, or am I imagining it all like he’s been saying for years? It what they do, how they get away with it. None of us would stay if they weren’t such brilliant liars. I’ve only just accepted that it was abuse and not just him turning nasty with drink and being one of those men who’s always right and has to have the last word and thinks housework is women’s work because he earned more
No! I’ve read enough posts and articles on line, videos on YouTube etc. They all seem to do very similar, build up immaculate reps, lie through their teeth, mess with our minds til we don’t know which way is up any more, brainwash us until we not only believe they’re innocent, but that we’re to blame . The problem is it makes no sense to us why this man who loves you would do these things. We try to rationalise their behaviour by our standards and assume they love us. It makes no sense so we believe them when they say it’s our fault. But they are not like us. They don’t have a conscience, mine actually believes he has a right to treat me like this. He’s my husband and he’s just trying to make me see he’s right, make me obey him like I promised etc. He justifies his actions and doesn’t do guilt or accept blame , just denies everything. It worked before so he just keeps on denying it all. He thinks I’m weak and wouldn’t dare or don’t have the guts to leave. Or perhaps he thinks I’ll always doubt myself to much to leave him. I’m writing everything down, the past, spotting his cycles and all the things everyone on here talks about. Even so I still look over at him carrying on as if nothing’s wrong and it feels so unreal. We have to keep remembering what they’ve done, what they’re capable of and how callous that makes them. Good men don’t behave like that. He can’t love me, if he did he couldn’t treat me like this. Doubts are just him messing with my mind. I have a notebook full of these little quotes and things I work out or read somewhere. I still doubt myself, but they definitely help. My counsellor says it takes time to brainwash us and will take time to undo it and keep reminding myself of the truth. Keep posting, try the helpline while you’re waiting. You are not alone. You are not to blame and you know you’re not exaggerating. It happened, it’s just hard accepting they’re so callous. Hugs, believe in yourself

[SunshineRainflower]

Hi Duvetday,

It was the Power to Change course I tried. I got the impression it was more aimed at women who were still in their relationships and were confused/in denial/didn’t know anything about abuse. I was at that stage at one point but that was a while ago and since then I’ve read hundreds of articles about abuse, watched hundreds of youtube videos about n*********s, p*********s and abusers and read two books on it so I wanted something that would build on that and go into more depth and this course didn’t, although it would have improved in later sessions (I only went to one session and my experience really put me off).

I like the content of the freedom programme from what I’ve seen online about the dominator, head worker etc because almost all of the descriptions match my ex, he seemed to be a combination of them all and the level feels better. So maybe it would be better. I don’t think I have the pattern changing one or recovery toolkit in my area and not even sure if the freedom programme runs here anymore. One of my problems is I’ve had so much therapy including CBT 3 times, CAT, counselling, art therapy, mindfulness mediation and even anger management. A lot of these things going over the same stuff like looking at negative thoughts and doing breathing exerices and the repetition of it starts to drive me mad and make me feel even more irritated and like I don’t fit in anywhere. I definitely see the benefit of this sort of thing but not when you’ve heard it 10 times before and nobody else in the room has, it makes me feel like an alien in the wrong place. Do you go through relaxation techniques in the freedom programme or is it mainly looking at abuse dynamics? Does it talk about red flags of abusers and prepare you for when you are ready to date again in the future?

[Author]

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