T
tyler
New member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2010
- Messages
- 1
Hi, new member here, hello.
I've joined on behalf of my missus, who I'm desperate to try and get help for. It sounds perhaps strange, so I'd better explain.
My woman is 22, I've been with her for the past 4 years and she suffered sexual abuse around 10 years ago. She never received counselling or anything following the incident and spent a number of years going off the rails, taking drugs etc during her teens, most likely spurred on by the fact she's had no way of coping with the trauma.
When I met her she was bubbly, cheerful and although unhappy with the things most women seem to be with themselves she'd reached a point where keeping busy and distracting herself from quiet moments alone meant there was only the odd occasion where she'd break down, and even then it was briefly. However, it's obvious to us that from that period up to now that the feelings & fears in her head were still there, just disguised or repressed. When she moved cities (40 miles distance) to move in with me a number of months after we met, she had anxiety grow from mild, to having bad days, to what it is now. Other symptoms kicked in and her current state is the worst and most worrying I've ever seen.
She can't leave the house. She's left the house around 20 times in the past 2 and a half years. Panic kicks in massively even by going into the garden or sometimes just looking out of the window, and she feels bad stomach cramps, palputations and / or that she's going to have an accident instantly. The times where she has gone out (just up the road to the shops quickly) is when she's been lucky really, a mixture of things going right for her.
She's had 3 mental health advisors and 2 private therapists come to see her at the house. The advisors had to be repeatedly requested for as they seemed so reluctant to do home visits. Two of them visited once, the other 3 times and briefly too, before declaring her supervisor won't allow home visits now. The therapists were costly, one being really unhelpful and the other ignoring her request to move an appointment date as her anxiety was terrible (the thought of people coming to the house has a horrible effect, but she knows it's the only thing that can help) and she never got in touch again or answered a call. Any kind of help she requests now involves them telling her she has to help herself, whether it to be to one of the 7 doctors she's tried now, NHS Direct (sometimes a panic attack or her depression leads to this), mental health centres (she's been on a waiting list for years) or whatever else.
For a few years in her late teens she was on 3 different anti-depressants prescribed by different doctors which with no doubt in mind at all made the situation worse, she was suidical and deeply unpredictable. Since off them she's sworn never to take any again.
We're in a remote part of the city we live in and took the house because there was nothing else, she was on edge in her hometown due to bad events and we just wanted to be together. However, my parents here are elderly and often ill with little means of getting around, her parents are miles away with little means of getting around. One works full time and is tired at night & weekends, the other is on DLA following a long-term illness and recent operation. We've no friends because we spend so much time together trying to battle the problem. Books, videos, all self-help techniques she can get her heads around, she tries really hard. I left work in March 2008 as her condition was so bad I couldn't leave her, she was in a terrible state and she felt incapable to look after our young son properly. Looking back, that period was miles better than this. We're on low income, she only qualifies for the low-rate DLA and Income Support, and I can't qualify for Carer's Allowance. I basically get nothing, but manage the money as I can't let her deal with the stress of dates of payments and low balances etc. We've been looking for a house to rent near my parents for 2 years, but it's a desirable, expensive area. Not many people consider housing benefit.
The local council housing scheme has offered nothing. Attempts to get priority even on the low level so we can be near 4 different family members have been turned down because "we feel your partner is enough help for you". I try my best but there's many things I've tried to help her with and failed, knowing it has to be someone experienced & neutral. I'm depressed myself, pretty much to current events, but then what will the doctors offer me? Yeah, I can imagine, the same stuff she quite rightly refuses to take.
She's getting knocked back by so many things whether it be doctors, advisors, therapists who don't want to come out. DLA officers who question her like she's a criminal, turn her down when she asks for advice. Housing offices refusing us due to DSS or just having nothing available. Our private landlord has not liked us being on DSS since I started caring for her full-time and even though she's had rent on time and no house damage etc she served us a repossession order last month and we need to be out within 3 weeks of today. The council said they'd help but then withdrew the offer when they required my missus to travel 2 miles to their department to drop papers in in person... I haven't got a car or anything by the way but she wouldn't cope anyway.
Add all this to the constant anxiety, panic, the clastrophobia she has in the house and the agoraphobia she has whenever outside, the Irritable Bowel Syndrome she has and the zero support she receives, and what you get is pretty much a ticking bomb of anger, panic & upset. The slightest thing will set her off such as not being able to find a household item. She'll feel so frustrated and worthless and the walls cave in, bringing everything up again and another breakdown ensues. I used to be shocked when thinking of how she has breakdowns pretty much daily but I'm not now, it's common for 2 or 3 a day. She can't relax when the lad is at school or in bed, and she's can't sleep due to the worry. She'll pass out from overthought at 4 or 5am, I'll wake with the young lad at 6 or 7am when he wakes me. Then she'll wake around 12pm, maybe 1 or 2pm and then by night I'll pass out 2am trying to distract her and she'll not sleep til 4 or 5am, and the cycle has been like that for months.
I'm really sorry for probably going into too much detail by far, I guess I'm guilty of being used to having no-one to talk to except her, like she is with me and long-distance phone calls to tired family. Just needed to let it out and hope perhaps there's someone who offer advice on how to deal with medical professionals such as docs, therapists, maybe things to say that work? She's considered rehab but they say "only if you're suicidal". She's not that again, yet. But she does scratch herself rather deep on the arms and legs without knowing whilst she's panicking.
Really feel like there's nowhere to turn in terms of getting her the help she so badly needs, I'm disgusted at her being told each week by some barnpot down the phone, "Well, you DO have to put some effort in you know". If only they could see the upset that causes.
Thanks if you did read this, and even more so if you reply.
I've joined on behalf of my missus, who I'm desperate to try and get help for. It sounds perhaps strange, so I'd better explain.
My woman is 22, I've been with her for the past 4 years and she suffered sexual abuse around 10 years ago. She never received counselling or anything following the incident and spent a number of years going off the rails, taking drugs etc during her teens, most likely spurred on by the fact she's had no way of coping with the trauma.
When I met her she was bubbly, cheerful and although unhappy with the things most women seem to be with themselves she'd reached a point where keeping busy and distracting herself from quiet moments alone meant there was only the odd occasion where she'd break down, and even then it was briefly. However, it's obvious to us that from that period up to now that the feelings & fears in her head were still there, just disguised or repressed. When she moved cities (40 miles distance) to move in with me a number of months after we met, she had anxiety grow from mild, to having bad days, to what it is now. Other symptoms kicked in and her current state is the worst and most worrying I've ever seen.
She can't leave the house. She's left the house around 20 times in the past 2 and a half years. Panic kicks in massively even by going into the garden or sometimes just looking out of the window, and she feels bad stomach cramps, palputations and / or that she's going to have an accident instantly. The times where she has gone out (just up the road to the shops quickly) is when she's been lucky really, a mixture of things going right for her.
She's had 3 mental health advisors and 2 private therapists come to see her at the house. The advisors had to be repeatedly requested for as they seemed so reluctant to do home visits. Two of them visited once, the other 3 times and briefly too, before declaring her supervisor won't allow home visits now. The therapists were costly, one being really unhelpful and the other ignoring her request to move an appointment date as her anxiety was terrible (the thought of people coming to the house has a horrible effect, but she knows it's the only thing that can help) and she never got in touch again or answered a call. Any kind of help she requests now involves them telling her she has to help herself, whether it to be to one of the 7 doctors she's tried now, NHS Direct (sometimes a panic attack or her depression leads to this), mental health centres (she's been on a waiting list for years) or whatever else.
For a few years in her late teens she was on 3 different anti-depressants prescribed by different doctors which with no doubt in mind at all made the situation worse, she was suidical and deeply unpredictable. Since off them she's sworn never to take any again.
We're in a remote part of the city we live in and took the house because there was nothing else, she was on edge in her hometown due to bad events and we just wanted to be together. However, my parents here are elderly and often ill with little means of getting around, her parents are miles away with little means of getting around. One works full time and is tired at night & weekends, the other is on DLA following a long-term illness and recent operation. We've no friends because we spend so much time together trying to battle the problem. Books, videos, all self-help techniques she can get her heads around, she tries really hard. I left work in March 2008 as her condition was so bad I couldn't leave her, she was in a terrible state and she felt incapable to look after our young son properly. Looking back, that period was miles better than this. We're on low income, she only qualifies for the low-rate DLA and Income Support, and I can't qualify for Carer's Allowance. I basically get nothing, but manage the money as I can't let her deal with the stress of dates of payments and low balances etc. We've been looking for a house to rent near my parents for 2 years, but it's a desirable, expensive area. Not many people consider housing benefit.
The local council housing scheme has offered nothing. Attempts to get priority even on the low level so we can be near 4 different family members have been turned down because "we feel your partner is enough help for you". I try my best but there's many things I've tried to help her with and failed, knowing it has to be someone experienced & neutral. I'm depressed myself, pretty much to current events, but then what will the doctors offer me? Yeah, I can imagine, the same stuff she quite rightly refuses to take.
She's getting knocked back by so many things whether it be doctors, advisors, therapists who don't want to come out. DLA officers who question her like she's a criminal, turn her down when she asks for advice. Housing offices refusing us due to DSS or just having nothing available. Our private landlord has not liked us being on DSS since I started caring for her full-time and even though she's had rent on time and no house damage etc she served us a repossession order last month and we need to be out within 3 weeks of today. The council said they'd help but then withdrew the offer when they required my missus to travel 2 miles to their department to drop papers in in person... I haven't got a car or anything by the way but she wouldn't cope anyway.
Add all this to the constant anxiety, panic, the clastrophobia she has in the house and the agoraphobia she has whenever outside, the Irritable Bowel Syndrome she has and the zero support she receives, and what you get is pretty much a ticking bomb of anger, panic & upset. The slightest thing will set her off such as not being able to find a household item. She'll feel so frustrated and worthless and the walls cave in, bringing everything up again and another breakdown ensues. I used to be shocked when thinking of how she has breakdowns pretty much daily but I'm not now, it's common for 2 or 3 a day. She can't relax when the lad is at school or in bed, and she's can't sleep due to the worry. She'll pass out from overthought at 4 or 5am, I'll wake with the young lad at 6 or 7am when he wakes me. Then she'll wake around 12pm, maybe 1 or 2pm and then by night I'll pass out 2am trying to distract her and she'll not sleep til 4 or 5am, and the cycle has been like that for months.
I'm really sorry for probably going into too much detail by far, I guess I'm guilty of being used to having no-one to talk to except her, like she is with me and long-distance phone calls to tired family. Just needed to let it out and hope perhaps there's someone who offer advice on how to deal with medical professionals such as docs, therapists, maybe things to say that work? She's considered rehab but they say "only if you're suicidal". She's not that again, yet. But she does scratch herself rather deep on the arms and legs without knowing whilst she's panicking.
Really feel like there's nowhere to turn in terms of getting her the help she so badly needs, I'm disgusted at her being told each week by some barnpot down the phone, "Well, you DO have to put some effort in you know". If only they could see the upset that causes.
Thanks if you did read this, and even more so if you reply.
