I have a friend with a similar past who has done huge amounts of healing through inner child work.

Are you working with a therapist?

Big hug for you PS.... What happened to you as a child isn't your fault..... It's helped me before to look at little children to see how helpless they are over the adults in their lives....

I've struggled before with guilt as well ... Picturing a small child or looking for photos of small children helped to realize that there was nothing I could have done to change the situation then

Are you on any medication to help with nightmares/terrors?......xo

Hello 83. Welcome to the forum.

Those nightmares kept getting worse for me as I willed my way up the career ladder until I started taking the need to heal my psychic injuries seriously. Once I started taking my just-a-patient psychotherapy seriously, those nightmares became a guide to where I needed to focus my psychotherapy. I am proud to say (Excuse me while I perform a few superstitious gesticulations. Knocking, crossing, etc.) that it has been years since I have had a full-blown nightmare episode. Mine tend to come in packs. . .

Alas, gnasty as it is, that guilt is only one of the symptoms in my baggage car. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could heal a broken bone and not worry about the residuals or side-effects?

welcome 83. you are not what happened to you. you are not responsible for what happened to you or around you.

it was not your fault. none of that scary awful stuff was your fault.

i'm so glad you came here to be in this group; it will help. this place is safe.

i know now you are a grown up and going to be a dr so you can understand sophisticated writing but the little kid in you can sometimes appreciate more simple sentence structure. (thank you for going to school to be a ((dr)).

donnawanda, I am working with a therapist and i'll have to look into healing work. Thanks for the suggestion.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

Thankfully I do have medication to help with the nightmares and am working with a therapist. I really needed the reminders that scars are not always visible and the answer is sometimes simple. This nightmare has already provided several new realizations. I think the main reason that these nightmares are occurring more often is that I will be returning to my program soon after a medical hiatus.

Personally, I have unfortunately had the same past. Also, have been blessed with a multitude of health problem. I have learned that dreams are a form of release. Yes, release. Since you are working with a therapist this can be viewed as a positive sign. It helped me to realize that if I continued to let these situations ruin my life that I was allowing these people to victimize me all over again, and again. Of course, this was a long process. I am a professional person that earned a Masters Degree 4.0, and tried to be a perfectionist all of my left as a result of my past. I have found most people are uncomfortable with me when I want to discuss my past. Most never speak to me again. I feel a victim again. Then, I found that I was a help to people who had been through the same or similar situations. Helping others has given me great joy. I hope I have helped you with my rather long post. My prayers are with you.

Well, congrats on how far you've made it! I went to school for social work, so even though it's not medicine I can kind of relate. Really social work is all social issues in the first place. Anyway, I can kind of understand how difficult it is even though our experiences are not exact. If you are not working with a trauma therapist, is there any way that you could find one and try it out?

Maybe when things calm down, I'll have to take a look into volunteering with animals or people with similar experiences. I am working with a trauma therapist but my experiences seem to be outside of their specialty (acute traumatic experiences). Thank you both for your suggestions.

83, my work with a trauma therapist whose specialty was directly on target with my experiences was so beneficial to my career in health care that it helped shape it. I became a hospital chaplain from it to work with trauma patients at an ER in Chicago.

As for animal cruelty in my childhood, that was part of my experience growing up with mentally ill parents. My mother had a way of having "accidents" with pets. It went right up into her old age, she had another incidence of it when I was in my 5os.

My childhood recurring nightmare was of one of those pets returning to me after its mistreatment by her. Her psychotic bent toward destroying instead of maternally nurturing was hard to overcome as her child.

Muji, thank you for sharing some of your story, it is helpful to know that there are others out there who have turned past suffering into a positive career outlet to help others.