[Anon]

What happens when the event that is seemingly the cause of the most trauma could happen again?

[Benjamin Fry]

Anything that has happened can in theory happen again. The question is which is it that you are really frightened of? Is it the possible repetition or the actual event? I understand very well what you mean. I lost my mother when I was very young and perhaps as a consequence when I got married and had children I had a very unusually high awareness of the possibility of their death. However, the reality was that they were alive and very much with me. What I was really haunted by was not the possibility of their death, but the reality of my motherís. As I have worked through some of those issues, Iíve become less concerned about the possibility of a death in the family: even though it remains just as possible or likely.

Therefore from what you say, it suggests to me that you need to put some work into resolving the original trauma. Does your life ever bring you back into contact with people or situations that remind you of this original trauma? If so, thatís also a good sign that emotional work remains to be done. If you want to talk about it more in specifics here, please do.

[Benjamin Fry]

Thanks for your private message which I read with interest. You were clear that there were aspects of your life which you didnít want to put into the public domain even on an anonymous web forum like this one. When I read that, I was concerned about what had happened to you. I imagined worse scenarios than you actually listed.

Iím not trying to minimise what you have experienced. The point Iíd like to deal with is quite how dangerous it seems to you to even talk anonymously about issues that would not strike the average person as automatically private. This suggest that in your development as a child you learned to be very frightened of conflict in the family.

You mention some events which seem to you to carry little emotional weight and yet would normally be quite distressing. This further suggests that you have been cut off from your own emotions for some time. The original traumas of your life have left you unavailable for new overwhelming emotions. However you are unaware what this trauma might be.

Iíd like to address the material that you present in more detail and more directly and perhaps have some ideas for you, but Iíd prefer to do this in the forum. This is partly for your own protection since if Iím talking rubbish, someone else can tell you. But also so that others can benefit from it too. Many more people read this forum that write in it.

Could you consider posting your message here? You can leave out anything that worries you. Your identity is not available to any user of the forum ñ including to me.

[Anon]

Dear Benjamin,

Thank you for your reply. I know that the things I wrote about arenít ëseriousí and that people go through far more. It is something I constantly battle with ñ the fact that really my life has been untroubled and yet I have been so overwhelmingly unhappy. I have huge admiration for the people on this site who talk so honestly and with such courage and I donít want to offend anyone by talking about what must seem to be ëtrivialí events here. But I have been trying desperately hard to make sense of things and these are the only events that I remember that may have perhaps contributed negatively to how I feel.

I donít remember a time when I wasnít depressed, or battling with periods of depression. I think as a feeling this was a general sense of feeling low, unexcited, perhaps not good enough etc. It was not connected to events (at least not events I remember) and was a vague sensation, one that didnít really interfere with my life but was just a nagging feeling somewhere in the back of my mind. I had a happy childhood (apart from this nagging feeling), loving parents, no major events, etc. I donít remember feeling worried about causing conflict by discussing things ñ more concerned perhaps that I would lose my invisibility (as long as everything is fine you can get through life relatively unnoticed.) Some things that happened upset me more than perhaps seems logical, but especially someone breaking into our house.

So the event I am worried about that could happen again is being broken into but this time being in the house.

[Benjamin Fry]

Firstly Iíd like to acknowledge that your feelings and your suffering are very serious. The events that you perhaps link them to may be less obviously traumatic than some, but the issue that we are dealing with is you and how you feel. You deserve as much consideration as the next person in that regard.

Iím struck by your reaction the house break-in. Iím also struck by your apparent lack of reaction to your parentsí divorce and the gunpoint mugging. Perhaps neither seem entirely normal. Iíd explain this by suggesting that the house break-in acted as a trigger to something else earlier in your life that had actually happened. In general you seem to have been depressed all your life that you remember, therefore Iíd suggest that it was something from before you can remember. Your lack of reaction to your parentsí divorce and the gun point mugging suggest that you are suffering from a very repressed emotional system. Except for when it comes to home invasions.

The house is actually a very strong symbol and metaphor for the self. You play out in your mind the possibility (given the smallest stimulus) of an intruder, who you imagine is threatening or violent or armed. I think that this has actually happened to you, but perhaps not in such a literal way. In your head you donít get to the end of this scenario. You donít get past the threat. You never get a conclusion. It is possible that there was a real event, that there was a real threat, that there was real violence and that there was a real weapon. It is also possible that the event was so traumatically concluded that you cannot get past even a metaphorical connection with the conclusion of the threat (or not).

I am concerned for you here because the metaphorical imagery suggests an invasion of the self. There is also the image of a weapon, and then later the real event of being on the wrong end of a gun. Furthermore, you seem to have a genuine terror of revealing your truth to anyone (particularly to your parents ñ ever; your screen name is Anon), even though thereís not much in it that seems to be very taboo. And thereís no conclusion to the fantasy. Your subsequent depression and disassociation in life seem to indicate that you have retreated from something very real, and you concern about revealing information suggests that you are still on the run.

Iíd like to ask you if anything comes to mind when reading this. Obviously I donít know your past, but these are the themes and issues that I see coming through from what you talk about. Do they ring any bells at all?

[Anon]

Dear Benjamin,

Thank you for your reply. Nothing springs to mind. I do not have nightmares that would perhaps indicate a repressed or forgotten event that is causing emotional problems.

The problem is I don't know how to move foward. If there is no obvious cause I don't know how to change my responses, which seem to be so engrained. However, if there is a cause I am still stuck with the problem that I don't remember and despite my attempts to fill in the gaps I am seemingly getting nowhere. Things still aren't actually okay. I am not happy - just surviving more effectively. I know the journey of self discovery can be exciting and rewarding but I am tired, lost, confused and have run out of ideas of how to move forward.

[Benjamin Fry]

I agree that people can be depressed for no obvious reason, but not that they can be depressed for no reason. Depression implies an emotional repression. Repression implies some feelings that are considered dangerous by the conscious mind. One way to make it easier for these feelings to flow is to re-educate the conscious mind that feelings are actually healing, not dangerous. That is mainly the point of my book.

The other point that you may have picked up from my book is my conviction that unconsciously we are all doing things that are designed to help us to get back in touch with these lost feelings. I wonder what you might be doing? Is there any dysfunctional behaviour in your life? An addictive or compulsive urges? Any patterns in relation to people or events? I was of course struck by the repetition of the theme of robbery, once in side the home and once at the point of a gun. It might be a coincidence, but it might also be your way of using your reaction to the first event to stimulate something; and your unconscious choice of the second to communicate something.

I wanted to leave my comments quite open in the last reply to see what might come up for you. Your response suggests an immediate association for you to intimate relationships ñ particularly physical sexual intimacy and notions of rape. Frankly from the images that you had presented and the symptoms you had described, I was concerned about the possibility of some form of harm or abuse in your infancy or early childhood that you are not consciously aware of. It is an explanation that seems to fit the facts that you have presented, but clearly it is quite a conclusion to jump to on only this little information. It is just an idea and I could easily be wrong even just to mention it.

For your own safety and well-being Iíd like you to please consider taking this information to a professional counsellor, and preferably one with experience of the possibility of some kind of childhood abuse. That would be the best way for you to get some proper professional reassurance about the possibilities here. Certainly if there was some abuse this is not something that you can cope with alone. And if there wasnít, it would be best to get some very experienced help to dismiss the idea.

This is a terribly difficult area for therapists and clients. There is a syndrome called ìrecovered memoryî which is either people remembering such incidents once they have the support of therapy, or people making them up to please their manipulative therapist, depending on who you listen to. Obviously there is usually no objective way to tell. That is why I suggest that if you want to see a counsellor you should make sure that he or she is aware of these issues. Stick to your truth no matter what anyone else has to say about it ñ including (and perhaps especially) me.

[Anon]

I have no memories or even indication of memories of such an event. Nor can I pinpoint any repeated patterns of behaviour that suggest to me an unconscious attempt to get in touch with lost feelings. Therefore I remain open to the thought that this is likely to be something else.

Thank you for giving me your interpretation. I will certainly treat it as just that for now - an interpretation - but it has been helpful to discuss some of these things.

[Benjamin Fry]

Just to be clear, are you saying that you have had thoughts about the possibility of some physical abuse in your past for the last few months, and yet feel that you could never raise this thought with your counsellor (for the various reasons you give). I just wanted to be clear that this is what your last post is saying, or did I misunderstand?

[Benjamin Fry]

To Guest Anon:

Please register with the site and ask your question by starting a new topic. I'll leave your question here so that you can copy it to your own topic.

I intend to run these questions from my book as mainly individual one-to-one Q&A. Your post is a new question and therefore needs to start a new topic so that each can get the attention it needs. Thanks.

[Anon]

The thoughts have literally been passing moments and I think simply as a result of looking for a reason for how I have been feeling. Inevitably when you start examining feelings and past or present experiences in depth you begin to try and find an explanation for them. It has been a possibility that has from time to time come into mind but simply because I don't feel my overwhelming dissatisfaction and unhappiness with life matches the events. I have always dismissed these thoughts immediately. The passing thoughts have also been unspecific. More a sense that there is the possibility of something I don't remember that is the cause of distress than exactly what that experience may be.

[Benjamin Fry]

I think that your approach to these issues is very commendable. You are accepting possibilities while not rushing to any judgement. You are engaged on a psychological treasure hunt. These are ideal qualities to bring to that quest. Sometimes it is best just to be patient and to wait and see what comes up. Thatís the opportunity that regular therapy can give you.

Returning to your original question, Iíd say that the conviction that you live with that something that has happened before is something that could happen again is actually your way of expressing the emotional reality that something that has happened is something that you might actually feel something about again. So I'd encourage you to focus your attention on resolving your current emotional issues rather than worrying about the actual possible events of the future.

Hence the fear really being of what has actually happened rather than what might. Then if you set this against the present reality that talking about yourself is a source of acute anxiety for you, you can perhaps see what a bind you are in. Unconsciously you are trying to resolve the past (by projecting it onto a conviction about the future). Consciously you are trying to ìnot think about itî. Hence your profound discomfort and your disengagement from much of your life and feelings.

The battle of these two great forces in your mind will ease through counselling. One of the main ideas of counselling is to create a safe space in which the conscious resistance of the emotional unconscious doesnít seem to important. It sounds like you have found a good counsellor and this should be a great help to you. It might be a good idea to talk there about your reluctance to talk. If you can discover some of the reasons why you are so reluctant to communicate your pain and suffering, then you may become freer to communicate your pain and suffering.

Iíd like to acknowledge your courage and to validate that you are genuinely suffering. In my opinion this suffering is likely to be caused by a lack of emotional resolution to past issues. What those issues are I can only guess at. And remember that whatever it is, it relates to your perception of your experiences. This may be very different from the actual objective reality of the experiences themselves (like a childís fear of monsters in the shadows of a dark room).

[Anon]

I am just going to have to take this slowly. I have found a very good counsellor and slowly but surely I know I will begin to explore these things with him.