Trust and feelings [Trigger warning: Rape]

I brought up how I was molested by my biological father in therapy on Monday, and ever since then, I've been a total wreck.

Monday- I was totally dissociated and yet felt totally normal mentally. It was like a mix of a little in our system fronting with me at the same time. I was talking like I was on drugs, but felt totally normal and numb at the same time. During the session, I was shaking like crazy, so when I came out of it, I was very careful going down stairs and being on the icy sidewalks outside, and spent the rest of the day in bed, basically unable to move. I was terrified someone was going to assault me, and I slept with the door open and the light from the vent fan over the oven on.

Tuesday- I went to see a speaker at a film forum, and was not let in because it was at max capacity. There was no reason to stick around, but I just did, and waited 2 hours to go in and get a DVD signed by the director. The staff was incredibly rude and aggressive, totally overwhelmed by the people there. Normally I would take their incompetence and roll my eyes, whatever dude, and just roll with it, but their meanness really hurt yesterday. I walked home after getting the autograph, and when I got home I just broke down. My dad (Adopted, not the one who abused me) also has DID, we met through this forum, and he can't handle me talking about this stuff because it triggers him, so I felt like I couldn't talk to anybody about this and that made me sadder. I feel like he recognized this, but there is a stubbornness to my dad where he expects me to change everything about me, and he never has to change himself. So when I really needed to talk to him and decompress, he was immediately aggressive with me about how he couldn't handle it, and clearly felt attacked. I just retreated to my bed and things slowly got better, but not fully.

Today- I woke up and was paralyzed with fear that if I put any part of me into a dark area, like my feet slightly going under my bed, I was going to be assaulted by scary monsters, and with no one around to help me, I tried to power through it and went to the bathroom. But when I was molested, my biodad was on a toilet, and I was just frozen from the trigger. I'm avoiding the bathroom now because of this trigger, and basically have to numb myself beforehand with distractions like a podcast. I couldn't do anything, so I carefully went back into bed and fell asleep, sleeping through when I was supposed to be at work training a new employee today. I did a quick 10 second rinse off shower and got dressed so fast I'm not even wearing underwear right now, and got to work. My Dad was there, and I told him the truth, but not all these details, merely "I was asleep". He was angry and triggered, and blurted out something about not helping me get a future job, which he had not brought up before and it feels like he only said it to hurt me, which it did.

My feelings so far are that I'm leaching off my Dad and not contributing enough, hurt over the molestation stuff, hurt over how mean people were, hurt that my Daddy doesn't love me because of things I know he either got over, didn't care about or we reconciled, hurt that he never makes changes and yet I have to make changes to everything about me and tiptoe around his triggers because he refuses to change things about himself, hurt because I messed up with work, and hurt because of this newfound sensitivity I have over feeling new things I'm used to supressing, but now I feel like I can't. I also feel like I'm dealing with old trust issues, because I know my Daddy loves me very much, but I just can't believe him because I feel unlovable at times. He is the reason I feel anything to begin with, and I know he will read this, but I really have no one else to talk to. This is my first time logging in to PF in years, because I'm that stuck and unsure of where to go.

It feels like I'm missing details, but this is the gist of the past several days. Basically I feel like I'm screwing up constantly and it hurts more because of therapy revelations.

Thank you.

Situation normal, Nic. Awesome to hear from you again! It has been a while.

You are starting to confront some really painful stuff, and that hurts. This opening up also makes your nervous system temporarily hyperaroused, hypersensitive to irritants you normally could tolerate. Can you adjust your therapy and/or work schedule so you can have a couple days off work after hard sessions like this? What do you do for grounding? Do you walk, swim, work out at the gym, do housework, cook or bake?

Do something with that nervous energy that makes you feel taken care of by you.

NicS wrote:I also feel like I'm dealing with old trust issues, because I know my Daddy loves me very much, but I just can't believe him because I feel unlovable at times.

This feeling is normal for survivors and in fact for most people when they are depressed. It would be an issue for you no matter who you were with.

It gets better. Really, it does. Many of us have been there, done that. I have.

About your adoptive dad. I know right now you feel very hurt and abandoned because he is maintaining a boundary with you. Some day you will see this differently. Some day you will see that he fully accepts and verbally acknowledges the fact that you are dealing with a really nasty, deep wound but he has similar wounds and he is not yet in a place where he can openly discuss in detail either of your wounds. Also, and this is remarkable, he is able to openly discuss this situation and will talk about it up to a point because he has a carefully designed boundary to limit new vicarious trauma. Families often struggle with boundaries and cannot have even this much discussion, or they have far too much discussion that causes further damage, so although you are miserable right now you are also way ahead of the pack.

Hi, Nic. It's good to see you posting again. We're sorry that you're struggling.

We're not sure what else to say to be supportive. So we second what Una said, and we hope that you feel better soon.

MDs