[?????]

Ok, well I am not really sure where to start with this. For years i have thought that I probably need some professional help but i am scared of admitting this to anyone. I am really depressed and find it hard to leave the house or answer the phone. I think the only reason no one has particularly noticed my problems is that I hide them well and my husband does the things that I can't manage. My father abused my sister when I was child but never me and i have spent my life feeling ugly and pathetic and rejected. In my teens I sought sex whereever i could and drank to extremes. I am now married and the demons i thought i had buried are coming back to haunt me. My husband has quite a low sex drive and often does not want to have sex. All the sex we have is innitiated by me and I tell him that this makes me feel rejected and hurt and he ignores me. He just says that he is tired. I told him that perhaps we should think about going our separate ways if he doesn't want me anymore and he says that he does not want this. I don't understand where I go now. i need to feel valued and i don't get that at home. my dad was a serial adulterer and i am scared i will end up the same way. i hate the way i look and my personality and try to find validation in other people. i like people to fancy me because it makes me feel good about myself, it is the only thing that does in the short term. i love my husband but i am scared that if i don't get some attention from him i will end up hurting him by going else where. i am scared of admitting these things because i am terrified that someone will tell me to leave my husband. to a degree i know i use him as a crutch, but i really love him and we do have some really good times together. i find it hard that he finds it difficult to express his love for me.

i find things difficult to cope with currently, i over analyse everything and the slightest thing will make me cry. i really feel like if i admit any of this to a therapist they will force me to take medication. i am scared what people will think of me if i go a therapist, i think people will think that i am weak and pathetic. i don't really have anyone to talk to about any of this because i don't want people to know what a terrible person i am.

i think i have come to a point where something has to give.

[Benjamin Fry]

Iím immediately struck by how lonely it might feel to be having all of these very strong feelings and yet have no-one with whom you can share them. I wonder where and when you learnt that it was dangerous to tell others about your problems? Probably it is something that you internalised while witnessing the sexual abuse in your home. They say that witnessing abuse is as much an experience of abuse as being the direct victim of it. Perhaps you felt a strong urge to keep quite about it, or were directly threatened to do so.

In general Iíd agree with you that professional help could be of huge benefit to how you are feeling and to gaining an understanding of how your past is not yet resolved emotionally. These residual emotions are what is threatening your present. You stay depressed to repressed these very strong and difficult feelings (they are back to haunt you). Naturally some of these traumas are ìacted outî in a sexual sphere because that is perhaps where they originate. Professional counselling for sexual abuse survivors is often available and usually very sympathetic and understanding.

No one can force you to take medication unless you are detained in a mental health facility because a doctor thinks you are a danger to the public or yourself. This doesnít seem to be the case at all. You might know people who will think that you are weak if you go to a therapist, but actually the truth is that they are the weak ones because they are so threatened by their own feelings that they canít bear someone else to even look at theirs. I used to feel the same way, but then I learnt a bit and grew up a lot.

It sounds to me that you are not a terrible person, but a terribly abused and lonely person. Perhaps you can say more here if you like about your reflections on the sexual abuse in your home, the feelings that you remember this stirring up at the time, and any experiences in your adult life when you felt the same way. If you canít yet talk to a therapist in person, you can get some practice by talking here.