Parents Whose children have been sexually abused Community Group
This group is for parents whose children have been sexually abused. We welcome both Mothers and Fathers. Here, we can offer support to one another. We can vent, cry and lift each other up. No condemning or criticizing allowed. We are here for support. We LOVE (((HUGS))) !
We are on the other side of disclosure and have been healing.
As a reminder, my 3 children were abused by their grandfather. It took a long time for my oldest daughter to willingly see and work with a therapist. She has made progress but still suffers from depression and anxiety. I am at the point where I am considering finding a new therapist though because I feel we are at a stand still.
Now I have more symptoms I am worried about.
She went running to her dad (my husband) in the middle of the night last week crying. She had heard a woman scream. He looked around outside and sat with her and listened. They checked on the rest of us, we were sleeping so they knew it wasn't us. My husband finally said he thinks it was the blower belt in the AC getting ready to go out because he had heard a similar sound earlier.
My worry is, she thinks the house is haunted. She sees shadows in the mirror, figures of big tall men, white hazes. She hears things. Voices. She smells things. Cigarette smoke, farts and poop. Nobody else in the house sees, hears, or smells these things.
Schizophrenia runs in my family. I have two cousins that have it. I am worried sick about my daughter.
Could her visions, etc, be a symptom of PTSD?
Could she have an evil spirit attached to her?
There are so many directions my mind is going.
I need to get this out and hear some feedback.
As a reminder, my 3 children were abused by their grandfather. It took a long time for my oldest daughter to willingly see and work with a therapist. She has made progress but still suffers from depression and anxiety. I am at the point where I am considering finding a new therapist though because I feel we are at a stand still.
Now I have more symptoms I am worried about.
She went running to her dad (my husband) in the middle of the night last week crying. She had heard a woman scream. He looked around outside and sat with her and listened. They checked on the rest of us, we were sleeping so they knew it wasn't us. My husband finally said he thinks it was the blower belt in the AC getting ready to go out because he had heard a similar sound earlier.
My worry is, she thinks the house is haunted. She sees shadows in the mirror, figures of big tall men, white hazes. She hears things. Voices. She smells things. Cigarette smoke, farts and poop. Nobody else in the house sees, hears, or smells these things.
Schizophrenia runs in my family. I have two cousins that have it. I am worried sick about my daughter.
Could her visions, etc, be a symptom of PTSD?
Could she have an evil spirit attached to her?
There are so many directions my mind is going.
I need to get this out and hear some feedback.
Yes, there's research that shows that children who have suffered trauma are three times as likely as those who have not to develop symptoms of schizophrenia. But I wonder about this. What was done to address the trauma? I.e., what kind of care those children received for their trauma -- do they have histories of long psychological intervention before they developed their symptoms? Or were they left without intervention, simply to struggle with the fallout of trauma (unlike your daughter, for whom you jumped into action)? I'm going to hazard a guess that it's a good sign that your daughter was willing to go to a therapist at all -- even after a period of reluctance. Who really wants to dredge up all that horror willingly?
Here are some articles that may help you see how your daughter's new symptoms are "normal" to PTSD and not necessarily symptoms of an organic, underlying mental illness:
https://www.verywell.com/relationship-between-ptsd-and-psychotic-symptoms-2797525
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30957719
Also, coincidentally, I was just reading about sensory processing disorder this morning, and your post makes me wonder how this might be caused or exacerbated by trauma....
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160617-the-daily-pain-of-having-extreme-perception
So, there are lots of unknowns here, but I think you can write off the evil spirit. The evil spirit is now rotting in jail.
Also, things can transfer a bit. Years before our daughter disclosed the abuse, we took her on a "dream" vacation to a different country where people speak English, as we do, and the accents are typically considered by Americans to be "charming." After a week, she said she was having difficulty understanding what people were saying, and she was desperate to get home. This made no sense. You'd think that the longer you'd spent listening to a different accent, the more attuned your ear would be to what they were saying. It was a while after she finally told us about the abuse that it split me like lightning -- her abuser is from a different country and speaks English with a very pronounced accent different from ours. Our daughter must have been completely triggered to be surrounded by people speaking her own language with a different accent. It kills me that we didn't know and subjected her to this, rather than being able to prepare her before the trip, "Well, that's just the way they grew up speaking the same language; it doesn't mean they are a threat. We can take breaks if you need to, and just listen to some music for awhile." Nope. Just hearing those accents was enough to put her back in "hell." And thoughts of "hell" are surely accompanied by the sound of that sneering neighbor making her do things she didn't want to do, and convincing her that she did want to do them.
So, the issue of what constitutes "imagination" is actually pretty flipping complicated. Your daughter deserves a very sensitive therapist who will be loathe to label her as congenetically mentally ill without a whole lot of intervention first.
Schizophrenia is genetic.
I understand your concern, but you have to be careful not to get too many steps ahead of the matter and deal with the here n now. One day at a time. Advocate your concerns to counselors.
Since schizophrenia runs in your family, that is, unfortunately, a possibility for your daughter, especially if she is approaching her puberty/ teens (I do not know how old she is), when nany latent genetic nentual illnesses develop.
Now, I agree that her symptoms (such as perceiving smoke, etc.) maybe well linked to the abuses. And maybe (I am no psychologist at all, just guessing here) an incipient schizophrenia may be exteriorizing / fueling her PTSD memories of the abuse, both episodic (memories of fates) and sensorial (smells, textures, etc.).
I would recommend EmDR therapy by a well trained and experienced therapist, two of my three kids were also abused by their paternal grandfather, and it worked for them after having really severe PTSD symptoms. But EmDR does not work in clients suffering from an underlying mental illness, to the contrary, it can actually worsen the illness symptoms.
I agree, having a second professional opinion for your angel seems to be important at this stage. A Big Hug to you!