Hello

The question is how does one ask for help? Whenever I have done so I am told that as I am strong I do not really need help.

To the outside world I appear as an example of success - my story in as few words that I can muster. I am the eldest of seven maybe nine children. The first types of abuse that I remember was physical, psychological and emotional, mainly perpetrated by my parents.  As the eldest I was always responsible (from age 3) for the behaviour of my youngest siblings. (this is very short, being made to speak another language even though they both spoke English, being beaten whenever one of my younger sisters did something wrong, or hurt themselves, and lots lots more)

At age 10 I was raped by my stepfather, with the full knowledge of my mother (this I finally realised/found out about 8 years ago).  My mother then blamed me for all the ills in her life and abandoned us to the care system, where further psychological, emotional and physical abuse took place. It was at this stage that we were turned in good little Catholic girls (it was not a home run by nuns but by a Irish catholic housemother). Despite all of this or maybe because of all this I lost myself in reading and learning English, and I did well at school, but how I came to leave school is another story.

I forgave my mother, always making excuses, always blaming myself for everything that had happened to me.  My late teens and early twenties were years of self abuse and depression.

At 19 I gave up my first child for adoption. I then married for the first time, a weak and dependent man (drugs) I had four miscarriages, followed by my son dying at the age of 24 hours, I then produced two beautiful girls 30 months apart.  My life changed, I was totally besotted with parenthood.  Then my marriage failed, I became a single parent, I went and studied again, another marriage failed this too painfull to recount  here and there is far too much that happened as well around this time, I had a "nervous breakdown" the psychiatrist I was sent to told me that I was not a suitable case for treatment as I would recover without outside intervention, that I was sane! By this time which was some 14 years ago I desperately needed to talk through my past, but if you appear to be a survivor the NHS appears not to want to know? And even though I have many more issues of loss to deal with that are not at all related to abuse I still need a shoulder or an ear tor cry on from time to time, and still all I have been given was a counsellor who was overwhelmed by my story, cried and told me that I should go into counselling as a profession because I could help others cope!

Has any one else experienced this sort of rejection from the "professionals"? And where can one go if one has limited means and time other then places like here? I cannot make the commitment to in depth counselling as I have the responsibilty of my chronically ill daughter, and she must come first most of the time.

Thank you for reading and its is a lovely day out there!