I know you are not a liar, but you need to be more honest

(Note: This message has been abridged to protect the identity of the writer)

I've written to advice columnists and never gotten a response, so I figure try this thing out.

How does one let go of the past and learn to love themselves? I've tried the whole psychotherapy route, found it not worked, and I have many life hurts that I have never shared with anyone, even my life partner. I don't know how to open up fully. I am always on guard, never letting anyone fully know who I am. My life partner has come the closest to knowing me fully.

I have nightmares of the past, scattered flashbacks. It has been about a decade now, when will I get over it. I know my partner tries to get to know this part of me, but I am scared to let him know this.

I just want to forgive and forget. I'm under the treatment of a doctor to try to get me to be able to actually relax. I'm always on guard to protect myself. Sometimes I wonder if I am ruined for life.

I was raped when I was 18 when I was on a date. I showered for days, scrubbing until my skin almost bled. I went through an alcoholic phase to numb everything. It was my first time ever having sex, and sadly something I will always semi remember.

I got in a relationship almost as soon as I hit univeristy, as I thought it would give me some protection. It was a bad relationship to be in, I couldn't relax, I told him about the rape, and he didn't believe me.

I am not the person I used to be, and I don't think I am living up to my full potential. I don't know how to get at that. I don't sleep, and when I do, I wake my partner up screaming. I go through long stretches of feeling worthless and as if I live with a demon inside of me. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to let someone else in.

Well, there is nothing about this note that is not completely heartrending. I’m struck right now by just how ugly life can be sometimes.

I promise your struggle is not insurmountable, but it is, you know, a pretty big deal: don’t be too discouraged just because you’re not over it after only ten years. Whoever said ‘time heals all wounds’ was a total douche in this respect. Don’t worry that it’s taking a long time.

Wow, your ex-boyfriend was a real tool. How do you tell someone who says they’ve been raped that you don’t believe them? How do you even say that? I can’t come close to imagining how that conversation went.

However, I’ve noticed there’s a disturbing amount of people who are likely to respond to a confession like yours with disbelief. We can chalk this up to a few things, and personal shittiness is only one of them.

First, there are indeed people out there who will lie for attention. Chances are, if any of you reading are willing to lie about being raped just to garner sympathy, you already have a problem worth sympathy, so I will take this opportunity to suggest you run with that, instead of sabotaging the attempts of those who want to reach out for help and support after having been through a sexual assault.

Tragically, people who have actually been raped are likely more common than those who will just lie about it. I actually can understand a person not wanting to believe the statistics because they are just that staggering, but I’m pretty confident in the people at the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN). Their website is one hell of a buzzkill in this regard. According to that link, one in six women and one in 33 men are sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, while only five per cent of rapists ever see a prison cell.

Part of the experience of sexual assault is a sense of shame and fault. That alone would lead you to want to bear the burden of this on your own – then, when you got up the courage to actually say something, someone rewarded you with a big kick in the heart. You had reason to want to keep this to yourself, and then you had an experience that reinforced that impulse.

This impulse is a problem in itself, and it has the built-in ability to hijack your attempts to deal with it. You say therapy failed you -- and I’m willing to believe that there are people in every field who are just bad at their jobs -- but even if you were dealing with someone competent, how could it have worked for you when you have to meet the mental health practitioners halfway and be totally, completely open, and you haven't felt capable of that?

What do you think ‘letting go’ is? I’m pretty sure it’s not just deciding to forget about it and hoping that that happens for you. What do you think real forgiveness entails? I’m pretty sure it’s not as simple as just wanting bad feelings to go away.

There might be people out there who could keep it all in and will themselves to be content, but I’m pretty sure that’s not most of us, and I think you know it isn’t you. It sounds like a tall order, and you’ve already made a huge step in writing to me like this, but I don’t think the real change can come until you are 100 per cent real with someone in your life who can give you some real support.

In fact, I believe if you don’t do that, you’ll drown, and if I were you, I’d grab someone by the ears and scream everything into their nostrils. If you don’t think your spouse or any other non-professional you know can handle this yet – the information, I mean… you might not choose my particular somewhat violent approach – you’re going to have to get back into counseling. I can't give you any guarantees, but do this one thing, lay it all on just one sane person, and you never know. The rest may just become apparent.