Part of my journey from my old life with my abuser to my new life of freedom involved having treatment at various intervals for my mental health. The help I received over the years since leaving my ex has been varied in terms of helpfulness and levels of support.
Post traumatic stress disorder left me with horrendous nightmares by night, and flashbacks of horrible memories by day, both of which hit me only a few days after leaving my ex. It took years to heal. This was accompanied by the physical pain of the injuries that I had suffered, which served as constant reminders of the experiences I had been through. This all happened whilst the police were gathering further statements and evidence to use in his trial, which was fast-tracked through the Crown Court. I won't go into detail here, partly because I don't think it is helpful to look back on that, and partly because he is still serving his sentence and I would like to think (perhaps unrealistically) that he will turn his life around one day... Suffice to say that it was one of the worst cases that police team had deal with in terms of injuries and they reckoned that I could have died if I had remained in that situation with him for just a few days longer than I did. I was one of the lucky ones.
But I can give a breakdown of the type of help I have had and how helpful I have found it, in case anyone else would find it useful:
1. Traditional counselling
This has had a varying degree of success depending on who I saw. I had some counselling on the NHS at the beginning which as helpful, but the well-meaning psychologist I saw didn't want to put a diagnosis of PTSD on my medical records because she was concerned it might hold me back in the future. Unfortunately the effect of this was to delay me getting more PTSD-specific treatment without having to go back to the GP and demand it. The NHS has only got limited resources and so the number of sessions offered is very low, hence the need to go back on several occasions. I have also had private counselling, which has worked better for me but obviously has cost money, so isn't an option for everyone. I have also had a couple of bad experiences with counsellors assuming that the reason I was abused as an adult must be because I was abused as a child, and then refused to believe me when I said I wasn't. If this happens to you, you are entitled to make a complaint and request an alternative counsellor, which is what I did. Counsellors are not supposed to back you into a corner and make your sessions fit their preconceived ideas, they are supposed to listen to you and support you. I have found counselling can help if you are having problems with your memory or processing your feelings about your experiences, which are both side effects of having PTSD, and which will ease over time with help.
2. EMDR - 'Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing'
This is a very effective treatment for PTSD, but it is not available on the NHS in all areas. It involves having to recall the most distressing memories and talking through them, and then the therapist will get you to follow his or her finger from side to side with your eyes. It will bring up other memories as a result. All I can really remember about having this treatment is that it brought back more memories at the time, and it as really hard to go through, but once the course of treatment was completed, virtually all of the flashbacks and many of the nightmares had stopped. It was also exhausting, and after my morning treatment appointment I would tend to sleep for much of the rest of the day. The theory behind the finger waving is that when you have a trauma, your brain is unable to process the memory of that into your long term memory and it gets stuck in your brain like a loop of videotape (if you are old-school like me! If not then you will need to think of another metaphor!) - this is what causes the flashbacks and nightmares as your brain continues to try to make sense of the memories. What the finger waving does is activate different parts of the brain and help your brain to process the trauma memories into your long-term memory and take them away from the loop they are stuck in. This really made a difference to me and helped me to get my life feeling more normal again.
3. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - CBT
This was something I had later to help me with panic attacks that were a direct result of memories coming back at unhelpful moments - not flashbacks, but more like anxiety attacks. This was on the NHS but I had to really push to get it as a one to one as my local area likes to get people to learn about CBT in groups and I really felt I needed to talk about my individual experiences rather than sit quietly and be taught techniques to apply by myself at home. This was effective for me. We talked about what I was afraid would happen, and then by the end of the course of treatment I was identifying what I feared would happen in a particular situation, what was likely to happen, and the afterwards, what actually happened. In looking at how my fears did not come to pass, I was able to reduce my anxiety around the situations that I had been struggling with.
4. Mentoring
I was very lucky in that the police who worked on my case referred me to a mentoring scheme local to me. The charity paired me up with a volunteer who was also a survivor and we met on a regular basis for a chat and just to have someone who I could talk to - about anything I chose, but if I needed to talk about the abuse, I knew she would understand. In fact, we ended up becoming firm friends and are still in touch.
5. Independent Domestic Violence Advocate - IDVA
I saw my IDVA when I first returned to my parents' house after leaving my ex, and I saw her on a regular basis for some months. She helped me to identify that I had not only been abused, but abused very badly. She gave me a leaflet which asked a series of questions about the behaviour of my partner, and he had done all of the things except those relating to being a parent as I had no children. It was a bit of a shock. Had the court case been taking place nearer to my home town then she would have been with me to court as well. It was so good to have someone to talk to in detail when I couldn't talk to my family.
6. Freedom Programme
This is a group programme which looks at similar things to the one to one work my IDVA did with me, looking at the tactics and behaviours used by abusers to maintain control over their victims. I think it is a very good idea and would give the support of meeting other women who have been through similar situations which I didn't have at the time. However, if you have a faith then it can be less helpful as it does not help to address questions relating to where God is in abusive relationships, which I found hard. But the book which goes with the series, Living with the Dominator by Pat Craven is very good and did help me to figure a few things out. Check out www.freedomprogramme.co.uk for info.
7. Restored
This is a Christian charity which has been working hard to raise awareness of violence against women worldwide. They offer training to churches to help them better support victims of abuse in their congregations and they are in the process of setting up a survivors' network for Christian survivors. See www.restoredrelationships.org for further information. I have personally found them very supportive and helpful.
It's well worth getting some form of help from a professional after going through abuse - it is too hard for family and friends to hear about the details of how bad the experiences actually were. I found that whenever my family got upset, I would feel horribly guilty for how they were feeling and this fed into my feeling of responsibility for the abuse. It took a long time to stop blaming myself for everything and to accept that their distress was in fact a way to show how much they cared. I am so grateful for the wonderful support my family and friends gave me during a time when I was not always able to react to them in a very positive way due to the PTSD.
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