Sunday Afternoon..

I'm sitting here today feeling the after effects of a flashback! Not a nice feeling. I have pain in my stomach and feel very insecure today, I really don't know what to do with myself so am Trying to occupy myself playing games on line.. not that it's working very well, but I have to do something eh!

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I had a nasty flashback about my past, in what I saw I was back to when I was about 19yr old and being attacked by my neighbour, I could feel the pain, the fear and see him standing over me telling me to get on the bed! He had stripped off all my clothes by this point and I was feeling very vunerable, I knew what he planned to do and was scared, very scared. Flashbacks are a nasty reminder of the past and just about every Survivor that I know has experienced them in some way, they can be terrifying and can take anything form a few hours to a few days to get over. Hopefully this time I will get over it quickly as writing it out seems to help me put it away again. But the reality at the time is that you feel you are experiencing it all over again, it leaves you feeling drained and tired and very emotional.

One day hopefully I will be able to say that I've not had a flashback for a while, when that day will be who knows? But hopefully it will come soon for me. I've been having flashbacks now for about two years, when they first started happening I had no idea what they were until a good friend experienced what I went through whilst we were chatting on the phone! I didn't reaise that I'd been absent as such from the conversation until it was all over with, but she explained that I'd been shouting out, crying etc and she'd heard it all down the phone?

Initially that scared me senseless as I worried about what would happen if I had one in front of my children, but she explained to me that it was unlikely as I knew it could upset them so my brain wouldn't let it happen in front of them. A flashback is the minds way of telling us that we are ready to deal with the horrors of our past, or of a traumatic event that we live through, so I guess that was my mind telling me that it was now time to start my healing from the past. Now that I was safe it was safe to remember what happened and deal with it, initially I tried dealing on my own by joining support groups on line and talking to others who had been through similar things, but soon that wasnt enough and I found myself struggling big time with the memories and needing more help, so I got myself a councellor who specialised in Abuse Issues and started trying to get the help I knew I needed, It took me a long time to be able to trust her as most Survivors know 'trust' is a major issue for us, but now after seeing her for nearly two years I finally feel that I could tell her almost anything, so as of next week I'm going to try and really talk to her about the things that are happening for me now, the flashbacks the nightmares etc maybe she can give me some ideas as to how to deal with them better? Well at least I hope she can because I'm totally lost right now and just don't know which way to go next..