Bipolar Disorder Support Group

if you aren't feeling too bad i would NOT do ECT. i have had a number of them and they were used when i was in a really bad place. there is plenty of memory loss as a result. i would try every avenue before ECT. it does help, but at a cost.

look on " youtube"
and type in " current ect "
it's interesting

There is a book I recommend to people who are have been through abuse and also have suicidal thought.

The book is entitled, "The Seduction of Suicide" and it's written by a Psychiatrist named Ken Tullis (writes under the pen name of Kenneth Taylor) who has survived 8 suicide attempts himself.

He has been on Oprah, I believe on two occasions.

In the book, Dr. Tullis speaks of the mood changing effects of entertaining the thought of self injury or suicide. He speaks of how he would think cathartically in the face of impending personal failure.

As a backdrop, he says that people who have been abused...particularly in youth or childhood...only had the thought of death at their own hand...as a way to find relief to their internal pain.

Child abuse is awful.

It appears as though you've attempted Trauma based therapy.

There are also three other books that may help you:

Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman, MD
The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild, LCSW
The Angry Heart by Joseph Santoro, Phd

Your physical pain has been entirely remembered by your body. Your body and your emotions are coexistant. I use, as an example, when you find something that humors you...what do you do? You laugh, you smile. There is the tie between your physical being and emotional being.

Perhaps somatic therapy may do you some good.

ECT may help, but I have my doubts.

What may help you could be things like Bowman massage. You need a safe place, with a trusted friend or therapist, where you can emote your pain. I feel very sorry for you, but you need to bring those painful issues to the surface, so that you may verbalize them and place them in a historical context.

Maybe you've tried this and were not successful. Maybe you didn't get the right type of Trauma Therapy.