i completly understand what you are going threw when i was growing up i was physically and mentally abused and was also sexually abused twice when i was a child i grew up feel iscolated and feeling like i didn't belong then after i graduated high school i got involved with this man and moved out of my parents house and was again being phsyically and mentally and sexually abused when he came home from work drunk. i finally found the strengthed to leave him and start a new life with me and my child alone working and finally having a feeling like i belong and that im not this empty soul of a human being. a few years after i left my ex i met this wonderful man that showed me that love doesnt hurt and that no matter what he wouldn't hurt me. as soon as i thought that i finally put my depression behind me and thought everything was finally running smoothly i found out something that totally shocked me and changed my life forever . my mother was raped and thats how i was conceived and that it was done by my grandfather all i could do was cry and cry. i felt so dirty and still do. i feel so ashamed and wish i would of died when my mother had me its been 4 months sence i found out and im doing a little better i try to keep my emotions undercontrol for my child. the reason why im writting this is because i feel maybe this is a part of the healing proccess and that its time i stop feeling dirty and ashamed and to find the strengthed to move on with my life and to break the cycle

Reading your post again. I am so impressed. You have so much courage and strength. Leaving the abuser is something most people cannot or will not do. Your feelings and fears are completely normal after what has happened to you. When someone faces something which is so horrible, it is like dying. The brain itself experiences it as a threat of dying. Your brain protects itself from dying but the experiences are still there in the memory. Other people cannot understand and cannot comprehend why or how or how much that memory hurts. If you can, read the stories of other survivors and the self help books they have written. Also there are places for survivors to go and meet other survivors. Places where people who understand what you are going through, other women and other men who have been abused. We, survivors like us, are all over the place and people are afraid of us because we make them realize that the world can be unfair and dangerous and cruel. No one wants to know that, so they try to make us go away and hide. They say we made someone else do it to us. No one can make someone else abuse us. We are survivors and we are not the perpetrators. We are the humans and not the demons. We can help each other and we can grow and become better humans. It is unfair and cruel but we can make it work for us, and use our pain and suffereing to be better, and we can help others get better too. Trust yourself. You have all the courage it takes. If you fall down. That is OK too. If you have pain, know that that means you have inside you love and goodness, and you can depend on that. It is very hard and we get into a lot places which make it seem impossible sometimes, but in the end we can make the world better for us. It is people like us who have made the psychiatrists put PTSD in the textbooks. We are stronger than the demons. All the demons can do is hurt us. We are humans. Survivors are humans. That is what I believe.

I can't say anything about medication. I have only started taking prozac, and I cannot get any intelligible feedback from my therapist about it either. They don't understand my questions because they have not got a clue how it works for any individual. They are on the outside looking in. I am here on the inside and I understand completely about the PTSD, the fear and loathing and lonliness that occurs from childhood abuse and sexual abuse and how it effects your life. I have talked to many people over the last 10 odd years since I find out I have PTSD and people without special training in it just haven't got a clue either, and people who don't have PTSD, aren't survivors don't have a clue. It is not like other mental conditions. Now I can read your post and reply. Ten years ago however, after reading your posting I know I could not have responded. Now I can. Your post would have triggered me and I would have taken days before I could muster a reply. It can and does get better. It takes a long time and it seems to take forever and you cannot see the progress. I am not a physician or trained therapist, but I have found for myself that communicating with other survivors really is important. I am just another survivor but I know we have within us all we need to heal. With other survivors we can begin to learn trust and friendship and caring. What was done to you was so terrible and unfair I cannot express it. No child should have to experience such betrayal of trust by an adult. Children are precious miracles. We are here to become humans and to care for others not here to be used abused and misused by those who should be there for us. Your life is special and a precious gift to the world and it was misused. Your sharing and giving here on this list is an act of courage and strength and you have to trust yourself. Sharing with us takes real courage. You want to get better. You deserve to get better. You will get better, step by step, and each step can be hell, but it works. When you share we all benefit. When you help us by sharing your grief and pain and terror, it helps all of us to share and to grow. You cannot fight demons. We are not all Buffy the vampire slayer. Our demons go away when the light comes on, and that happens when we share with ot

ksim3127, Hi there and welcome to the depression center. You have come to the right place. There are many people in the support group who understand what you are going through and have a lot of knowledge and advice to offer. It is best that you talk to your Doctor about which medications work best for you, that way you can decide together. Make use of the tools on the left of your screen and keep posting on the support group. Please let us know how you are doing and if you are having any thoughts of harming yourself call a friend, your Doctor, a family member , 911 or visit www.hopeline.com. Take care, Susanne

Hi, I am a new member. I have never done this before, so I am unsure as to how to phrase my questions for your input. I have been suffering from depression, or should I say I have been getting treatment for depression for about six years. I'm sure I have had depression for much longer. I have had over the years several doctors, taken God only knows how many different medications, and have just recently received ECT treatments. And what's so very, very scary about this whole thing, I am no better!!! That's why I decided to post my problem. I will try and give you a brief history of my past, which my doctor thinks is my problem. I was raised up until the age of 11 in a very abusive household. Physical abuse from my father and verbal abuse from my mother. My mother who had to raise six children, watch them be abused and herself being beat up by my father as well, I can understand how that was her only way of coping, was by cursing and yelling at us. She finally left him and our lives were better for it. When we left my father we moved in with my Aunt and her husband, which started a cycle of sexual abuse. He would try very hard over the years to feel up all of us girls. He would touch our breast and other body parts he could reach without anyone noticing, as often as he was within reach. But one day he went too far and cornered me into my own house alone and tried to rape me. At 13 that was very life altering and very eye opening. I finally just came right out and told my mother, who by this time had had her suspicions. She gave him hell and from that point on it never happened again. No touching, but he kept looking. To make this story shorter. As an adult I married, what after about five years, turned out to be an abusive (sexual and physical) husband. He was even smart enough to stop leaving bruises so as not to be arrested. And I was stupid enough not to leave, until one day his friend raped me. I know I encouraged this because I use to flirt back with him when he came over. God how he scared and hurt me. Again I did nothing about the abuse. Eventually, about 2 months after, I could not stand my husband to touch me, so when he wanted to force sex on me again, I shouted out to him what his friend had did to me, and he LAUGHED in my face