I lay there so quietly for what seemed like hours. I took that plastic bat and pounded it on my mattress until I fell into exhaustion. I sobbed uncontrollably while lying on the floor curled up in a ball. The shock of realizing what had happened to me brought me to my knees. The one incident of the sexual assault in my mother’s bedroom was now present. But within that text, fragments of forgotten memories from my childhood were beginning to emerge. To the reader, my writings looked like some kind of secret code or some newly discovered language. The following morning, I sat at my typewriter and pounded away at the keys. The book suggested that I write things down and use a bat to siphon off my anger, so I went and bought a typewriter and a jumbo plastic bat from a Toys “R” Us store. ![]() Page after page, I scoured through its contents to find tips and tools to help me. Then, I went and got the book, “The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse”, out of the dresser drawer. I had to protect him from seeing me come undone. For that entire time my son was gone, I called him every day to tell him how much I loved him. Next, I called someone to come get my son and take him for a couple of weeks. She said, “We suspected something like that.” Afterward, I called my friend’s sister-in-law and told her about the incident. The next morning, I asked my friend to leave my house. I didn’t know how to respond, so I went to bed and lay there wide awake while feeling terrified. As a result of witnessing that, an explicit, more severe flashback raced across my mind like an army of soldiers. While checking in on my friend’s daughter, I found her lying naked on a bed with her father. One weekend I had a male friend and his daughter over for a sleepover. I was living in this brilliant yet terrifying world called schizophrenia, where nobody could find me. I continued to speak in riddles and share my ideas with others that had no basis in reality. I wasn’t about to let go of schizophrenia just yet. So, I focused on the threatening voices in my head and the persistent symptoms of schizophrenia. They were presenting some very disturbing scenes that I was too scared to confront or unable to cope with. I began to ignore the flashback and the continuing ones that kept popping up out of nowhere in my mind. Schizophrenia had been protecting me from that truth. The strangest thing about buying that book was that I had no conscious awareness that I had even been sexually abused in the first place. Until then, I stuffed it into my dresser drawer, where it remained untouched for some time. Later that book would become essential to my recovery from schizophrenia. One of those books was, “The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse” by Laura Davis. The best she could do for me was to suggest some books to read on abuse. I attended eight sessions with the therapist, however she didn’t know how to do therapy with me, so it was counterproductive. It took so much courage to get there and now she was afraid of me. And I needed to talk.Īs soon as I got in to see a therapist and brought up my schizophrenia, I watched her squirm in her chair. Most psychiatrists don’t provide talk therapy. I chose to see a therapist rather than a psychiatrist because past experiences with psychiatry had taught me not to trust psychiatrists. But the flashback kept on resurfacing, so I made an appointment to see a therapist. Instead of exploring the incident, I gave in to the voices and ignored the flashback. I could only see glimpses into the incident that caused me to enter the world of schizophrenia.ĭuring that time, the voices in my head were getting louder and yelling at me to kill myself. At first, I was startled by them and had no idea what they meant. I was in my early 20s and had been experiencing flashbacks from my childhood while bathing my son. I remember it like it was only yesterday. My full recovery from schizophrenia happened more than 20 years ago. ![]() Sharing our experiences and finding common ground are critical steps on the road to recovery, so we’re sharing Tracey’s story hoping it will help someone else out there. Here’s a firsthand account written by Tracey Higgins, reflecting on her full recovery from schizophrenia. Even for a diagnosis as challenging as schizophrenia, there’s always hope. At PCH, we know recovery is possible because we’ve witnessed it personally.
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