This morning I emailed parents to tell them that I no longer want them to call me, that I will not visit them and do not want them to visit me. They failed to protect me from abuse and failed to support me afterwards. I spent about forty years being too frightened to try and talk to them about what ...

I've considered myself to be an atheist for most of my life, and I wouldn't go anywhere near any evangelicals or other fundamentalists. However lately I've become really interested in the Quakers, or Friends. I've not yet summoned up the courage to attend a meeting, but I think I will, one day. What...

Hi Mark, and thank you so much for taking the time to write! I agree that breathing and relaxation are really, really helpful - the techniques you describe are similar to some of my favourite qui gong routines. I've thought about CBT, and I've talked to people who have tried it, and I'm very sure it...

Hi thank you so much for your responses! It's good to feel that I'm not alone, and not a freak for feeling the way I do. I think - hope, really - that I'm beginning to get better, I've been on citalopram for a couple of months now, and I'm going back to work full-time next week. I'm not feeling so o...

Hi, Sane regularly posts messages on facebook about getting rid of your black dog, and somehow that never feels quite right to me. I don't mean that I enjoy being I'll, but I'm trying to get used to the idea that my anxiety and depression are part of who I am, and that there are strong (if not exact...

Hi acorn, thank you for your response. My GP has signed me off until Easter (anxiety with depression, stress and exhaustion - I was a bit shocked by that list, but actually that is pretty much how I feel), to be extended as necessay, and prescribed citalopram. My boss was fine about it, very kind, a...

I'm struggling with a lot of family crap at the moment, feeling in turn very angry, betrayed, abandonned, angry, confused, lonely - oh, and did I mention angry? I'm particularly anxious about a forthcoming family holiday, where I'll be expected to keep all those feelings under wraps to protect the o...

Hi all, I've just read this thread because I've been thinking about this question a lot. I was abused when I was 8 or so, I was told to forget about it and not to talk about what happened, and certainly nobody seemed to care how I actually felt. I recently told my mother that they'd just left me com...

You're right, acorn, I know you're right, it's just that I'm scared. I'm not sure why, in truth there isn't anything left for me to lose there, but somehow the the thought of all of them turning on me is really frightening!

I think it might be going that way for me too. Because my parents didn't want me to talk about what had happened to me (because they couldn't cope with my distress), it became my dirty secret. Apart from my husband, only one friend knew about it, and she still lives in my home country, so I only see...