Sunday

One would assume that not ever getting out of one's pajamas would mean it'd be nearly impossible to have any sort of difficult day, right?

Wrong. 

I fell apart first thing this morning- just a complete train wreck. Once again, I'll leave out the gruesome details, but, as you might have noticed from my previous post, it was pretty bad.

We came to a conclusion, though, and decided we'd try to go through the VA to see about in vitro fertilization once I get out of the military. I don't want to wait five years to get around to something we want so badly, especially when it's something nobody can ever be truly or completely prepared for.

I'm not ready to return to treatment tomorrow, to deal with the week ahead or try to face the people I know I will have to. 

I just want a break from the "real world".

Save Me

Today is my daughter's almost-birthday.
It would have been her birthday if I hadn't miscarried her a few months into the pregnancy, when my fourteen year old body, riddled with drugs my mother forced me to take every day, which I didn't need, could no longer keep both itself and a child alive.
I still love her.
She would have been eleven today.

It's been a long day, and the new therapist at treatment is most assuredly the devil incarnate.

Fortunately, I bring my journal to treatment with me- well, one of my journals- and I get more therapy from that than this woman most days.
Today, I cried- just like the last two days. The husband and I are still happy together, but the PTSD, in a combined effort with the military, is making our lives a living hell. Between flashbacks, ab responses, nightmares, blackouts, and field exercises, when we're together, we're mostly struggling just to avoid hurting one another.

I made a decision this afternoon that I'll have to make again in the morning. I'm going running tomorrow morning. I'm not going JOGGING in the morning, I'm going RUNNING. I'm going to run down the street, with my dog, around the corner, to the light and back, and if we have to stop, we will, but I'm going to try really hard to just let loose tomorrow morning. I don't want this primal side of me to be caged anymore. I can't open up at treatment most of the time, now because I don't trust the therapist, but also because of the guy who admitted to being a sexual predator and the guy who won't talk about anything but his penis and sex life. Maybe if I push myself to the brink, if I stop being scared of feeling fear or anger and just feel it anyway, and RUN like my life depended on it, maybe then the tears and sweat and pain and weakness will have a place to go. Maybe if I open the floodgate, I won't have to prod anything to come out.

I need this.

Traumatic Therapy

I got three hours of sleep the night before last, and around four fitful hours last night. Yet, I still got up and went to treatment as I should.

The therapist- and she doesn't deserve that title- walked into our group room and started moving chairs, saying she needed to have her back to a wall. While this is nothing surprising, as we all, always sit with our backs to the walls, it was odd for her to mention it out loud. One of the guys told her not to worry, nobody would hurt her with us in there, she was safe. She responded by telling him that our corner of the room needed to be quiet today, and stop "giggling and sharing secrets". Mind you, yesterday we spent much of the day outside because we were fighting anxiety attacks and angry outbursts from comments and discussions going on in group. He then told her he had no problem speaking to her about this privately, and he was very respectful, especially given her hostility, she snapped at him (again) and told him he needed to stop getting people kicked out of group, saying it was her group and she would run her group not him.

HOLD UP!

We talked to the admin guy she sent to try to get us to come back into group and explained our grievances and issues with what was being said and done in group yesterday. We did not ask him to throw anyone out of our group. We didn't even know what he said when he spoke to two people we all struggled with individually. It is not our job, nor within our abilities to throw anyone out nor to have anyone thrown out of any group.

She was extremely confrontational with all three of us sitting in that corner, and continually told one friend of mine he should just leave, and saying we were disrespecting her and she didn't see anything wrong with what was talked about. When I tried to calmly explain (as I started crying) that the discussion that was brought up early on yesterday was half of the reason I had to talk a certain friend down from going completely suicidal last night, she said that she didn't think what she said was that graphic and it was her group, not ours. My "big brother" asked one of the females with similar background to me to take me outside and calm me down when the crying became uncontrollable. The director got involved, though that therapist doesn't seem to have any repercussions from it all, and decided it was better to separate all of us. I'm being moved to the women's group, which makes sense, and I didn't fight her on it. I simply reminded her that her therapist was completely out of line. 

I know I don't handle confrontation well right now. I shut down and start crying. The klonopin didn't touch my anxiety, and my husband came up to pick me up, as I was afraid to drive in that condition. I am so disgusted and hurt and upset at this therapist it's incredible. She's the same one I've said before is a burnt-out hippie. I didn't trust her before she was our sole therapist, and now I can't stand her. I told the guys before she took over I didn't care for her, and they insisted she was a sweet person. They trust my gut instincts more than ever now, and so do I. I'm so sick of people like this!

Pushed Into The Mud

Our group started off today with our burn-out therapist saying she'd watched the movie Restrepo over the weekend and "got" why we're all messed up. She then proceeded to discuss in detail certain gory aspects of war and how she understood why it would mess us up.
Let me remind ya'll- this is a group for people with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The majority of these guys have been through multiple combat experiences AND a lot of us have childhood abuse backgrounds too. Our therapist is a perma-stoned woman old enough to have grandchildren, and has been divorced from an abusive guy with combat-related PTSD for a couple decades.
And this __________ _________ thinks it's a good idea to start off our Monday by speaking graphically about violent, bloody images and experiences.
Five of us walked out.
Let me explain why the therapist is stuck on this movie- sorry, documentary: we have a female soldier (and I use that term lightly in her case) who insists that was her unit and she went through that with them. I don't have to see a bloody, violent infantry movie to know that females aren't sent to places like that was filmed. The stories she tells have no emotional value- they could be taken from a shrink's notes, rather than real life. She talked about going to court, and, when prompted by the therapist she said- in these words- "I spent the entire time searching for an exit."
Nobody spends two hours "searching for an exit". You know where the blasted exit is, and you might spend a lot of time wanting to blow the joint to bits (let's be honest here) but you KNOW WHERE THE EXIT is.
Anyway, five of us walked out when we couldn't handle it anymore. Five of us might sound a lot, if you know that the most common process group therapy size is excessive at about thirteen people. However, there are more than 20 of us in ONE GROUP right now, which is insane at BEST, so it's really a miracle they even noticed we were gone. They "wrote our names down" (holy second grade batman!) and sent the admin dude out to "negotiate" with us. I went off the second I saw him coming out- I got three hours of sleep last night and had two anxiety attacks yesterday, I was in prime shape- and told him our therapist was unable to keep control of our group and discussing things that were setting us off- though I may have been more graphic and not quite as calm about this explanation. We also went off about the two people in our group who lie constantly and obviously and BS about everything. He pulled them out of group individually and spoke to them, the details of which I don't know.
Tonight, I got a phone call from a good friend from group, and he was crying. He'd already taken the drugs, they hadn't kicked in, and he was in meltdown mode. He described the "time-traveling" I do, trying so hard to hold on to reality, while being drowned in memories he didn't want to remember, feeling like he was barely hanging on. This is one of the toughest, most honest, most unbeatable dudes I know, and he calls me crying! I love this man like a brother- we understand each other so well it's scary, like looking in a mirror sometimes. Someone had made a comment about his service dog, and another had made several comments about violent stuff in front of a lot of children. He asked the guy to stop- more than I'm capable of in similar situations.
I am so angry at this therapist and at all these people allowing my friend, my brother to be hurt like this, to be dragged down in the place that's supposed to help pull him up. I'm so upset that these people put him in this situation.
He's better now, it's been a couple hours since the last part of this went down, but.... can nobody be trusted????