trauma

Dear Steph – My Mother hangs out with my violent ex.

May 12, 2022 — Leave a comment

Hi, 

Let’s get stuck in…before my husband I was in a relationship with a very violent cretin, who beat me up regularly. One time he ended up in jail for it, due to how bad it was…15yrs on and he still terrifies me…I have frozen on the rare occasions I have seen him..(he’s in jail more than out of it, he’s a burglar to feed his habit)

My Mum lives in part of the city where Travellers live…in a trailer…she has been having said ex round, long story short I’m feeing really betrayed.. AGAIN and let down by Mum AGAIN!

I’m now way too scared to pop round there in case he’s there and I certainly won’t be taking my children to see her!!!

I’m always getting  hurt one way or another by my mum  this letter is literally the tip pf the iceberg 

What do I do about it? X

Rebecca – UK

Dear Rebecca,

I am so sorry to hear that you suffered so much abuse from your ex. I know the long term psychological impact a volatile relationship can have and it sounds as though the abuse you suffered was well beyond the level I myself am familiar with. What’s as upsetting to hear, is that it doesn’t sound as though you’ve had much support from your mum in processing what you’ve endured. You’re not clear in your email on the nature of the relationship your mother has with your ex, but what is clear from is the impact her being in contact with him is having on you. To answer your question ‘what do I do about it?’ I think you need to ask yourself firstly what you want to do about it. If the goal is for your mum to step up and tell your ex to back the fuck off, consider her doing this and whether that would actually lessen the betrayal you feel, and if not, how you would rectify that in the long term. I believe that when it comes to our parents we have ideals that often don’t meet reality. You report you feel let down by your mum again, so this is not the first time she’s betrayed you. Is the reason you are unable to cut her off because of some inherent loyalty that she clearly isn’t capable of reciprocating? In your situation I would want to be having this conversation with my mum, imploring her to understand the impact her repeated betrayals have had on me. As is often the case in these circumstances though, we don’t get the response we anticipate. I understand you may love and want a relationship with your mum and if that’s the case you need to be calling her out on her behaviour. The issue here of course, is that she may not hear you, or offer you the apology and love you crave. Should this be the case my advice would be some trauma counselling, and possibly some radical acceptance work to help you accept an apology you may never receive. It’s a really heartbreaking situation to be in, we frequently base our lives around familial connections and accepting that in your case your mum isn’t able to participate in a reciprocal relationship must be soul crushing, it also might be necessary in order to move on with your life. As for your ex, there is no valid reason to see or speak to him again, I would continue to stay out of his way.

I’m including here some instagram pages you might find relatable and also the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy website as this is the best place to start if you one day consider looking for an accredited therapist.

https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/

I wish you the best of luck.

Steph x 

Send your questions or confessions to divamumsteph@hotmail.com and include ‘Dear Steph’ in the subject line. Can be 100% anonymous if requested. Otherwise first name and region will be shared.

Dear Steph – My daughter was assaulted.

May 5, 2022 — Leave a comment

Can you advise how to communicate with my 15 year old daughter after sexual assault as we’re trying everything and failing, suicide attempts, self harm….She’s missing so much school she’s withdrawn but still wants to go out all the time with friends. We’ve got counselling through the police and school. Trying to just be there for her and show love and understanding but it’s affecting the whole family her younger sibling is self harming as she sees her doing it and thinks that’s how you handle things. I should have protected her but I’ve let her down.

Dad – East Anglia Uk

Dear Dad,

First and foremost I’d like to express my sincere apologies for what you and your family are going through right now. I can only imagine how traumatic this must be for each and every one of you. I’m really pleased to read your daughter has been referred for counselling, as someone specialist in this field will be paramount to her healing. With regards to her still wanting to go out with friends, I imagine it might come from a place of craving normality. Her friends will likely be carrying on as normal to some degree, where as you as her parents are understandably concerned and unable to ignore the enormity of what she’s been through. Many victims of sexual assault will feel misplaced shame in relation to the attack, and this can have an impact on familial relationships. I am not a mother of teens but I have been a female teenager who suffered with her mental health, during a time when sexually inappropriate behaviour was common place. My advice is purely based on me empathising with your daughter and not from experience or professionalism. I personally wouldn’t advise forcing her to talk, it may be simply that she isn’t ready yet, or hasn’t fully processed what happened to her. I do recommend that when she is ready, having frank and honest conversations about the assault. Acknowledging that it happened and was extremely traumatic for her, may be an important part of her healing. It sounds as though she is unsurprisingly experiencing extreme emotions around the incident. There is a particular type of therapy I have found really useful for emotional regulation. It’s called Dialectal Behavioural Therapy and is focused on coping with uncomfortable emotions and better managing the effects of them. It really helped me with intrusive thoughts and extreme anxiety and panic attacks. It could be worth asking your GP to refer your daughter or looking to see if there is anywhere that offers sessions in your area. I would also suggest that if you are ever concerned about your daughter taking her own life or attempting to, calling 999 or taking her to A&E. Many GP’s are proving, in my opinion, quite useless recently, so if you’re ever concerned for her mental health and aren’t getting support from them, hospital is the next place to try. I understand that might not be what any of you want, but my experience of being in hospital for my mental health actually turned out to be a really positive one. I believe it saved my life. Your daughter may need trauma counselling alongside DBT so still accept the offers from the police and school. Additionally I want to address what you’ve mentioned about feeling as though you’ve let her down and didn’t protect her. I have heard this being a really common thought process for loved ones of victims, but I need to stress that you are not responsible. You are clearly a loving and concerned father and everything you are feeling right now is valid. But you cannot take the blame for someone else’s actions. You didn’t cause this, you didn’t allow it to happen, and you are not in any way shape or form to blame. I think every parent on the planet wants to protect their children at all times but unfortunately it’s not possible for us to do so. Please if you take nothing else from this response, know this is NOT your fault. I hope that the police are providing you ALL with support, but if not please ask your doctor for help or talk to someone you trust. Lastly in relation to your younger child, I would recommend trying to access counselling for them too and having a chat with their school to see if they can offer some support. I’ve listed below support services that may be able to help you further. You may already be aware of some of them.

Young Victims provide support for both victims and families.

Young Minds could be well placed to support your younger child to process what’s going on in the family.

Give us a shout offer free and completely confidential text support to anyone struggling to cope. This may be useful for yourself and your daughter.

Rape Crisis England and Wales these guys have some useful resources for supporting a loved one.

Finally, I’d like to wish you and your family healing and hope. Please know you are not alone, you are not to blame and you are doing everything you possibly can to help your daughter. Being strong for our children isn’t easy and in these circumstances I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it must be for you. I hope that with the right support your daughter and your family will be able to heal.

Take good care of yourself.

Steph x 

Send your questions or confessions to divamumsteph@hotmail.com and include ‘Dear Steph’ in the subject line. Can be 100% anonymous if requested. Otherwise first name and region will be shared.

Third trimester

April 15, 2021 — 2 Comments

You made it.

You’re on the homestretch now.

Is the baby ok…..?

When I was pregnant with my daughter I had chronic migraine from the minute I found out I was expecting. I was diagnosed with SPD at 16 weeks unable to walk and that was extremely painful. I soon became very depressed and ridden with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. By the third trimester I was bedridden and had developed preeclampsia. We were induced later, she was born in withdrawal from antidepressant medication. Her first year was defined by trauma and towards the end when she was recovering, I was being diagnosed with fibromyalgia. As she grows, and continues to thrive I feel like with each flare up I die a little inside.

You’re so strong.

Lot’s of people go through complications and come out of it okay.

Stay positive.

It’s a myth (I believe) that people come away from pregnancy and birth trauma ‘ok’ we all move through trauma very differently, but what your mind is able to process your body fights against and you don’t always fully recover. Trauma and stress have a lasting impact on the physical health of a person.

This week I turned 28 weeks pregnant. Last week I found out I didn’t have gestational diabetes and I cried tears of joy, because I didn’t think I would cope with more complications. But every glimmer of hope is followed by a plummet, a sense of doom. Here we are today and my diagnosis and risk catalogue, continue to grow and the list of complications multiply again. I’ve again suffered migraine from conception, got diagnosed with SPD at 16 weeks, again. My blood pressure has been high. I’ve had a reoccurring shingles infection that isn’t responding well to treatment. My whole body is in a constant flare, I’m in agony, not just occasionally now, all of the time, surviving on the very minimum of pain relief. Some days I can’t move my body at all. This week I turned up for a growth scan only to be told I have a low lying placenta (placenta praevia) they’ll book another scan for 36 weeks but and I quote, ‘if you make it to 36 weeks.’

Don’t have sex – I can’t even move my legs hun let alone spread them.

Don’t do…. (insert anything) here.

You might need a cesarian.

No big deal right? Women have c-sections all of the time. Except it is a big deal for me because my body is already broken and major surgery only hinders it’s recovery further.

But the baby is ok, right?

My baby, the one I’ve been fighting for. My second baby, is currently safely cocooned inside me. But We don’t know if he’s ok, not really. I find it odd that this is the first question people ask when so many babies suffer complications late in pregnancy and post delivery. I also feel like it unintentionally goes towards invalidating my struggle. The baby’s fine so therefore you’re fine, stop moaning. We know he has a 1 in 3 chance of suffering the withdrawal similar to his sister, albeit to different medication. We know he’s at risk of infection because my body isn’t fighting them off well. We know that he is at risk of being born prematurely. We hope that he will come out of this unscathed. I am doing everything I can to ensure that happens, but I am not in control of this situation. So I can’t answer the question with anymore certainty than my doctor can answer me.

As a family we are doing our very best to survive, and surpass the finish line, in one piece. We are trying to stay focused on the outcome of a healthy baby, but we are definitely not okay.

My daughter who can’t wait to meet her brother has no understanding of why her mum is ruining all her fun by not participating in anything. My husband is now my carer, and he’s not getting paid, not even in kind.

I am thirty three years old and I feel like my world has been tipped on its head for the 100th time in my life, except this time I have no control, no way to turn it around. I don’t feel brave or strong. I feel petrified. I feel weak. I feel out of control and I feel bone weary, exhausted! As though cement has been poured into my body by mistake and set overnight.

I don’t like the idea that we must keep calm and carry on, because I don’t feel calm. I’m carrying on regardless, because I have no choice. Not because I’m not broken. Or because I’m coping better than I make out. It’s because carrying on is the only option. There’s a saying that goes, you don’t know how strong you are until strong is your only option.

I hope once our baby arrives we will look back on this time like we look back on that time with his sister and we will be okay. We will have all survived, together. We will be happy, and we will have reasons to laugh. I hope that I will regain some control over my health and days will look brighter again. Hope is my coping mechanism. I hope, because to give that up isn’t an option. You might be wondering why I continue to share all of this information, why I’m not holding out to share better news, and the answer isn’t a simple one either. I write to hear myself think. I write to process my thoughts, and to unburden myself of the doors negative thoughts lock when trapped inside my head.

I’m not a person who believes her suffering trumps someone else’s. I know other people have it worse. I know I may come away from this beating the odds and better, but I don’t share for your attention or your sympathy. I share for my own peace of mind. I share so that when we come out the other side, we can look back and know we survived.