h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

HAVOCA (Helping Adult Victims Of Child Abuse) has just published the results of a questionnaire which you might find interesting.

http://www.havoca.org/Questionnaire/questionnaire%20results%201.htm

*waves to fellow survivors*

Terri.

Thanks, Terri. I had taken the questionnaire previously, after you first shared the link to the web site with me. Some of the patterns are really interesting. I especially found it hard to believe that of the people who participated in the survey, so many had gone public with the abuse and were taken seriously. I wasn't taken seriously until a couple of years ago, not even by therapists! I also was surprised that so many of the respondents who had therapy found it helpful. It's not been of much help to me. Interesting!

Oh good thing to post Terri

PC I found therapy to be the single best help. It was backed up by homework and lots of reading followed by a womens group.

Have you seen the "Starting Over" program in the AM? It is in Chicago and it is a good example. They are good therapists and the client sets the goal. For reality TV it is the best I have seen, I do not watch any others. They are taking applications!

I had to discard 3 therapists to get to the right one.
I do not think a Dr is the way to go unless you need meds for psycosis (sp?).

Social workers and physcologist are much better at practical help.
That is very hard to fire a therapist, even harder for someone desperate and depressed. It is a growing (fighting for yourself)experience in itself to do so.

You interview them as much as they you do at first. Then if you trust them you give it your all. It is more like a long term relationship and commitment. Nothing works in a 3 meetings like I have seen some suggest that is crisis intervention.
It is all in the blend but good help is out there.

Thanks Terri, useful but the more I read the more it drags me down again. And I have to prepare for going into london soon, for my first ritual, so must keep up!

I actually filled in the questionnaire, so somewhere in that lot i am a statistic! (wow!)

I didn't find therapy helpful either, other than the one blinding flash of insight from the psychologist who proved in practical & dramatic terms that my mother had been suffering from severe schizophrenia & i was reacting in classical textbook ways to this experience. Like a party trick if you know which buttons to press i suppose, but certainly impressive & an eye-opener for me.

After that, i was left to my own devices, trying to take comfort from the phrase "If you survived a childhood like that & lived, you can survive anything."

Sometimes i wish for a life that is a little more than just mere survival though.Maybe i am just greedy.

I was interested to see that not many were abused by their mothers (1%), i am in a minority. But a HELL of a lot seemed to have Grandad as the baddie. So much for the cutesie-poo images of gentle whiskery old men eh? Having seen what this does to someone, i am actually more apalled than at my own background, if i grit my teeth, i can attempt to partially justify my mother's behavour on the grounds she was definitely severely mentally ill, whereas the "grandad" was known to be "strange" but somehow tolerated within the family & thus got away with it.

Enough. Starting to & , i know what you mean kaz, sorry, don't look if it's too much.

The WASTE of life is what apalls me, if they REALISED that 40 or more years on, this would still be pretty much screwing up their victims, would they perhaps have stopped to think & maybe got their kicks in a less devastaing way?

Probably not.

zdt