Replies to '09/07 Dark Family Secrets'

Any knowledge I have on this issue is from reading and doing research…I have just started therapy and am still not convinced I have the right therapist…I haven’t even started to address my own abuse…I have only talked about my guilt over how I dealt with my son’s abuse by my brother.

Unfortunately, most therapists do not specialize in this area, and received minimal training on the issue.  There are different schools of thought regarding incest and sexual abuse and one of them is to, “ignore it” i.e.;  “picking at a wound doesn’t encourage healing” …that is fear based thinking…if you are being told to “get over it” you are talking to the wrong person…the long term effects of CSA need to be managed not ignored.  You can’t will yourself to be healed….it is a process requiring hard work and commitment to face it.  Dr. Phil is right on the money when he says, “Monsters live in the dark.” 

Marilyn VanDerber stresses the importance of finding the right therapist.  Don’t settle and don’t ever give up on you.

I myself just recently discovered Ms. Blume’s check list…and I have got her book…”Secret Survivors” on order through the library.  The more I am validated the stronger I get.  And I’ve recently discovered that the more I talk about this on message boards or through journaling the saner I feel.

I am going to do some research on Judith Lewis Herman.  I hadn’t heard of  her and I like to read as much as I can on this topic.

I too struggle with emotional immaturity and sometimes feel like I am two people…one of me is strong and sure and one of me is a terrified lost child hiding from the world.  I just wish I had control over which one of me is in charge.

As far as therapy suggestions…I am searching too…but I think that talk therapy has shown proven results from what I read. 

Here is an interesting article I found at http://cms.psychologytoday.com

Talk Therapy vs. Drugs

By: Hara Estroff Marano
Summary: Two different kinds of treatment, drugs and cognitive behavioral therapy, combat depression but affect different parts of the brain.

Talk therapy and drug therapy both combat major depression, but a new imaging study shows that the two treatments have distinctly different effects on specific parts of the brain.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) changes metabolic activity in the cortex, the thinking brain, to modulate mood states. It works from the top down, altering how people monitor and react to negative emotional stimuli in their environment. Drugs, by contrast, work from the bottom up, modulating neurotransmitters in the brainstem, which drive basic emotional behaviors.

Reporting in the Archives of General Psychiatry, neurologist Helen Mayberg and colleagues at the University of Toronto found that the unique metabolic changes produced by CBT in the cortex reflect newly learned ability to detect troubling emotional stimuli and to keep them out of working memory, where they get amplified by rumination. Such changes may make a relapse of depression far less likely.

The effects produced by both types of therapy point to a larger, complex circuit of depression in the brain. "Our imaging study shows that you can correct the depression network along a variety of pathways," says Mayberg. "Drugs change the chemical balance in the brain through effects at very specific target sites. Cognitive therapy is tapping into a different part of the same depression circuit board."