“Please let me just hug them – I will only be with them for a minute”….
“What are you doing here? ” my husband’s nanny asks with a shocked look on her face.
I look at my daughter’s face, whom I haven’t seen for a while. She is unsure: it’s clear she wants to hug me, but she also knows how angry her nanny will be if she does…Her hand is held very firmly by the nanny’s hand so she cannot let go to come to me.
“I was in the school for a meeting. I’ve only just noticed you go by. I didn’t know you were here.” I find myself stammering, shaking and apologising for my very presence in my own children’s school to a nanny who has no parental rights over my children – she is their nanny not their parent. Why am I apologising? But I know the power she has to make life even more difficult for me whilst the children are in her care, so I avoid a row and swallow my anger. Like a mother bear, I want to protect my children from another female who is trying to step between me and my children so that I can’t get to them. I hope instead that she will see how desperate the children and I are to give each other a quick hug.
“We won’t be long” I plead, so longing just to hold them for a few seconds.

“NO, we are going now. There is no time for a hug. We’re leaving. Come on kids” Her face is taught with anger, showing clearly how much she dislikes this situation. She is entirely dismissive of me, the words almost spat out with no effort to apologise for her inability to be accomodating of my request. She could stop for a few minutes if she had wanted to. There was no serious deadline she had to meet. So why can’t or why won’t she permit this little request? Do I also detect a certain look on her face as she grabs hold of both children’s hands and whisks them off to the exit of the school? I don’t know. All I know is that they are looking back at me, clearly distressed, while I have to just stand there looking into their dear faces, whilst another woman takes my children out of the door without a second’s feeling for mine and my children’s plight. I feel a huge surge of strong feelings: anger, resentment, frustration, shock, hurt. The very core of my motherly instinct is ripped. This stranger to our family, no relation even, now has the children she’s always wanted. At 50, she has never been married nor has had her own children – something which has deeply upset her. Instead, she’s found another way of having children: taking mine instead.

It’s just a dream, I tell myself when I wake crying. Except it’s been the pattern of these dreams for quite some time now. The dreams are always the same: I am back in my own home, one that she now lives in. I am unwelcome in their even though, in real life, I am still the owner of that home. In this dream home, she is the one who is in charge of my children. In these dreams, I am sometimes a ghost, sometimes I am merely invisible, a mere on-looker whilst all my children, the nanny, my ex husband, his guests ignore me as they simply look through me. When I am visible in these dreams, I am constantly reaching out to my children in all manner of ways: I am trying to feed them, I am trying to hug them, to talk to them, to protect them from a stranger……….always trying to be close to them. Invariably, I am met with palpable hostility from both the nanny and my ex husband – “why is she still here, when this is our territory now” is the unspoken question that hangs in the air. There is no attempt on their part to be hospitable, accomodating, kind or compassionate for the children’s plight or mine. They make it clear that I am now in their territory, their home, their space, their rules. I stand in my own home, with my own children and am made to feel like I’m the intruder, the unwelcome pest.

Although these are my dreams, these dreams are simply a representation of what is happening in real life, in my real situation, in my real experience of how my ex husband and his nanny treat me. The discomfort  in his employee’s face is painful and hurtful to see and experience and I ask myself what I might have done, or what he might have told her, for her to treat me in this way. She treats me like I’m an irrelevance, like she’s the mother and I’m her employee and one that she doesn’t like at that. Ocasionally I stand up for myself and tell her not to treat me in this manner, but there is never an apology on her part, nor any change in her behaviour.

I bitterly resent this. I carried those children in my womb for 9 months. I gave birth, screaming with the pain and bear permanent physical scars from the births. My eldest had to be pulled out as she’d got stuck and I live with the scars of that birth today – a constant reminder of her bond to me. I breast-fed each child, waking several times a night to feed them, comfort them, nurse them, sleep with them to keep them calm. I slept beside their beds in hospital as each of them had their various baby illnesses: diabetes, tonsilitis, pneumonia, meningitis. I held them when they were scared in hospital, comforted them till they fell asleep in my arms, argued with the doctors when I instinctively knew that they were not giving my son the right treatment when he was vomiting with his diabetes, spending hours by their sides unable to sleep whilst their bodies fought off various infections.

Now, in my dreams, my children are being told by their nanny to call her “mum” – to hear them say that about another woman who has come into their lives and taken over, rips me to the core. When my youngest daughter is with me, she often calls me my nanny’s name and call’s her nanny’s name mum, before quickly correcting herself. For this child to have another woman in my shoes is clearly confusing for her and hugely upsetting for me. I remind the children that they only ever have one mum and one dad. Nobody else in their lives will ever be their mum or dad. Other people can play those roles and provide huge support, kindness and comfort as did my step father who has looked after me since I was five. But he is not my dad – my real father is my dad. I love my step father as much as I love my dad, but that doesn’t make him my dad.

There is a bond which is never broken between parent and child and when a stranger comes into the children’s lives and tries to break that bond, it is the cruelist and most hurtful thing they can try to do to both the child and the parent. But this behaviour comes from a deep insecurity, selfishness and unkindness on the part of the person breaking that bond. Because they don’t have their own children, they seek to take on somebody else’s. It happens in many animal species where one animal who has no children, tries to take another animal’s offspring. We are just animals too fundamentally. What is playing out in front of my eyes is another female animal trying to steal my children.

My children are hurt, angry and resentful about the way this nanny treats me, but what can they do? They are only children with no power over the way the grown ups in their lives are behaving. They tell me they desperately want to be looked after by their mum rather than by a nanny but there is nothing they can do about it. They are forced to accept her even when their dad is supposed to be looking after them. He employs her even at the weekends and during his holidays with them. She even spent Christmas with them! Even when he came to collect the children from me, he brought the nanny with him on the 4 hour journey! It’s as if he is treating her like his surrogate wife even though she already has her own 8 year long relationship with another man and she is certainly not my ex husband’s type…..I don’t understand why he is doing this other than to think that he doesn’t like being on his own, either with himself or when he’s with the children. He has to have a woman around…..

When will these dreams ever stop? Even the sleeping tablets that have been prescribed for me by my psychiatris for post traumatic stress disorder brought on by having my children taken from me, don’t stop these dreams from penetrating my refuge of sleep. Sleep is meant to be my place of healing all the hurt in my daily life, all the stresses that we all go through, yet mine just brings further haunting, further distress that lingers throughout the day, playing on my mind as I go through each dream scene feeling each hurt afresh.

Oh God, if you ever listen to any of my prayers, listen to this one: “Please let these dreams stop and let me heal…”

Research shows that people with mental health illnesses are more likely to be the victims of violence than the general population. (Graham Thornicroft – Shunned). One study showed that people with mental illness were two and a half times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the general population (8.2% compared to 3.1%). There are many, many studies trying to determine which category of people are most likely to be violent and these studies vary in their conclusions. The role of alcohol or drug use appears to be a stronger predictor for violence than does having a diagnosis of a severe mental illness. As Prof Thornicroft points out, there aren’t studies of the prevalence of violence amonst “the physically ill”….

However, there are many studies which point to the prevalence of domestic violence perpetrated against the mentally ill. Some might say that living with a person with a mental health problem “causes” them to become angry/frustrated/fed up with the sufferer and that they are “pushed” into becoming violent towards them or that they are “defending” themselves against the mentally ill person’s “attack” (verbal or physical). The huge problem with domestic violence is seeing through the issue of “who started it” much like a parent has to see through which child hit the other first or which child started the argument. What is obvious, however, (and supported by a lot of research) is that many sufferers of depression and anxiety have such low self esteem that it is very easy for them to become victims of bullying, intimidation, harrassment, ill-treatment etc as they find it very difficult to stand up for themselves or to believe in themselves sufficiently well to be assertive with those around them. People with mental ill health are often told that they have “lost their reason or judgement” and they therefore doubt themselves when their spouse is telling them that they are wrong/stupid/unreasonable/selfish/uncaring/lazy/irresponsible etc etc. They lack the certainty that their own perceptions and judgements are correct as they are constantly reminded that they are “ill”. This makes it very easy for an abuser to get to the core of their victim and succesfully abuse them, hold power over them and undermine them to the point of cruelty. The “mind games” that a spouse can play over their mentally ill partner can be devastating. 

This has been my own experience. My ex husband played with my mind in exactly this manner. I now see this and can compare it directly with my experience with my partner of the last 3 years. My partner plays none of these games, nor does he try and control, manipulate, bully or abuse me in any way. I am fortunate enough to have formed such a close bond with another person to enable me to make these comparisons.

Researching the link between mental ill health and domestic violence has been hugely helpful to me in making my recovery. I can distinguish between those behaviours of mine which were destructive and those behaviours which resulted from being abused by my ex husband. Reading the profiles of an abuser helps to recognise a pattern of behaviour or dynamic in a domestic violence relationship. As a result, a person can disentangle those behaviours which are attributable to their own personality and those which resulted from being abused.

One such piece of research is an article from Mr Lundy Bancroft. This article rings so true for me as it is so close to the truth of my own experience. I have highlighted in bold those sentences which are exactly like my ex spouses behaviour.  Read the entire article by clicking on the following link or by visiting the Justice for Mothers website:

Here is an except from Mr. Bancroft’s article:

An abuser’s desire for control intensifies as he senses the relationship slipping way from him. He focuses on the debt he feels his victim owes him, and his outrage at her growing independence. (This dynamic is often misread as evidence that batterers have an inordinate “fear of abandonment.”) He is likely to increase his level of intimidation and manipulation at this point; he may, for example, promise to change while simultaneously frightening his victim, including using threats to take custody of the children legally or by kidnapping. Those abusers who accept the end of the relationship can still be dangerous to their victims and children, because of their determination to maintain control over their children and to punish their victims for perceived transgressions. They are also, as we will see later, much more likely than non-batterers to be abusive physically, sexually, and psychologically to their children.

 

The propensity of a batterer to see his partner as a personal possession commonly extends to his children, helping to explain the overlap between battering and child abuse. He tends, for example, to have an exaggerated reaction when his ex-partner begins a new relationship, refusing to accept that a new man is going to develop a bond with “his” children; this theme is a common one in batterer groups. (Marie: My ex took out a Prohibited Steps Order against my new partner claiming that he was a danger to my children simply becuase he suffered from Bipolar too). He may threaten or attack the new partner, make unfounded accusations that the new partner is abusing the children, (Marie: there were numerous threatening letters sent to my new partner accusing him of all kinds of behaviour), cut off child support, or file abruptly for custody in order to protect his sole province over his children.

A batterer who does file for custody will frequently win, as he has numerous advantages over his partner in custody litigation. These include, 1) his typical ability to afford better representation (often while simultaneously insisting that he has no money with which to pay child support), (Marie: my ex spent earns over £450k pa but maintains that he cannot afford to pay maintenance to me). 2) his marked advantage over his victim in psychological testing, since she is the one who has been traumatized by the abuse, 3) his ability to manipulate custody evaluators to be sympathetic to him, and 4) his ability to manipulate and intimidate the children regarding their statements to the custody evaluator.

There is also evidence that gender bias in family courts works to the batterer’s advantage. (Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Gender Bias Study) Even if the batterer does not win custody, his attempt can be among the most intimidating acts possible from the victim’s perspective, and can lead to financial ruin for her and her children.

I am still living in my brother’s spare room, 18 months after being ordered to leave the matrimonial home whilst he remains in our 7 bedroomed house. This means that the children’s home with me is still my brother’s spare room where we all share a bed. I have no car of my own ( I have to borrow my boyfriend’s) whilst he has just bought a new BMW people carrier. I have been awarded 12% of his income whilst he keeps the rest. I am over £450k in debt.

Would this happen if I were not “mentally ill”? If I had been strong enough to stand up for myself, and/or didn’t have a set of medical records and a condition that would be used against me in court, would I be in the situation I’m in? I don’t think so. Many of my readers have given similar accounts of how they have been abused by their spouses due to their own lack of self esteem arising from their mental health problems. There are many articles, comments, forum chats where people have said the same thing ie that they have been abused by their partners because they have suffered from a mental health problem which their spouse has used against them to take control, intimidate, manipulate and ultimately punish by taking their children away from them.

Any similar stories out there? Anyone who disagrees with this perception/research? As usual, any feedback gratefully received….

I am a mother animal, an animal with powerful instincts to protect and defend her young from intruders and danger. I am a mother whose whole being has become that of caring for her young over and above everything else, even at the risk of her own well-being. Every fibre of my body is wired in this way and nothing can override it. My programming was set millions of years ago and won’t change over my life time.

My instincts are so powerful that they form a deep part of my subconsious, a subconsious that is there for the good of all our animal young. Survival of the species, survival of the fittest. Those with the most powerful instincts will save their young and bring them to adult maturity. My instincts drive me to protect, warn, hunt down, track every danger, obstacle, intrusion which may prevent me from following through on my mothering. These instincts are so powerful that I spend every night dreaming of my children. Every night in my sleep I am looking for them, tracking their movements, sniffing out danger, hunting down intruders, finding my way to them to protect them from danger, fighting anyone in my way to help them in their distress. I am mistrustful, hyper alert, viscious if they are being threatened, fearless, courageous and 100% determined that they will survive at all costs. My own life is unimportant, I would die fighting for my children with not a moment’s hesitation. Their survival and well-being is more important than my last breath.

I grieve for them daily, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. They are alive but not under my protection, I am helpless against intruders, I am unable to nourish them, to comfort them, to teach them and guide them. My life has become half shadow even in bright sunshine. They are not dead, so I am not fully grieving yet I feel like a member of a herd whose young has gone missing and crying out for them to come back to me. I feel like an animal in a cage in a zoo with her young in another compound. I feel like I am pacing, pacing, pacing in circles, with a hunger in my stomach, restless and unable to settle.

Animal children’s instincts are set to seek protection from their mother. To find nourishment and comfort from them, to follow them, to be guided and taught by them, to return to them at night for safety and protection.

How does it feel for them to return to an empty nest? Animal young often die without their mother or fail to thrive. Some literally wither and die as they lose the will to live. They lack skills to defend themselves. They cannot hunt as effectively. They don’t know where to find the best catch or how to find a mate or worse, how to mother their own children as they’ve lost their role model and teacher. Any nature programme teaches these fundamentals and we all accept them as true for animals. Why do we question it for humans?

Male animals in the majority of species are not the primary carer. They don’t chose to stay with their young and do the nurturing. Even when they choose to stick with the mother of their young, they are distant and uninvolved; their role is hunter-gatherer. THey will fight for their children, yes, and often to the death with an overriding instinct to protect mother and child. No-one doubts that the male of the species is a fundamental part of the pack.

But they are not the nurturers. They are not the one that the child seeks out for comfort, even when both parents are present. This is not the way all baby animals are wired – they are wired to be with their mothers.

We all know and accept these fundamental instincts of animal behaviour. Why do we think that homo sapiens are so fundamentally different that these animal instincts and behaviour no longer matter? We are animals to the core. Only our “sophisticated” brain tells us otherwise. Our instincts don’t listen to our brain. That’s why we have them – they are there to overide the brain, to keep us alive and protect us even when our brain misinforms us.

I won’t settle. I won’t give up. I won’t stand aside and watch another person mother my children. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

Dream diary:

Friday 23rd Oct: I dream that I am at a school function with some of the parents; we are waiting for the children to come in to eat lunch at the buffet. I am looking out for my son, oblivious of anything else going on around me. I say to the Chef” you see, Chef, it’s vital that my son eats before the others, he’s got diabetes, he must eat first and eat well….” I spot him and hurry him to the front of the queue and make sure that his plate is piled high with all the best of the food. I settle him down to eat with his friends whilst I go back to see what’s left of the food. Very little. The chef tells me he’s put some aside but when I uncover the plate, the food has gone. Nothing. I go hungry…..but at least I know my son is eating…

Sat 24th October: I dream that I’m skiing with the children in an unknown skiing area. There are very few people around so it gives all of us room to ski really well. We are in the midst of a strange mountainous areas of craggy rocks with deep cravaces to large, expanses of snow. We are clearly in an off-piste area with much of the snow being fresh with no ski marks on it….The sun is out and the day is beautiful…all in all fantastic conditions to ski in.

My kids and I are happily skiing along when my youngest goes to near the edge. Before I can blink, she has fallen over the edge; I hear her screams as she falls. My pounding heart has leaped into my throat, I cannot breathe through panic. I make my way to the edge and look over…My worst fears are confirmed; she is lying face down in the snow at the bottom of the crevace.

She is dead…..

I awake sobbing, shaking, terrified……Thank God…….it’s a dream…..

I woke up crying from a dream I had last night. The tears started during my dream: my dream-self was crying and as I woke up, I was still crying.

I had dreamt that I had become a ghost. My ghost-self was able to be anywhere that my children were – it felt wonderful. If they were asleep in their room, I could sit on the end of the bed and just watch them sleeping. If they were sitting quietly reading a book, I could sit next to them mouthing the words alongside them and watch the expressions changing on their faces when they read a funny piece or a puzzling piece or simply watch them becoming drawn into a fantasy world. A world where I was too. I could run outside and play with them, chasing after a ball or just cheering them on…

Nobody would notice, so nobody could stop me. No-one could tell me that I shouldn’t be near my children. I could spend all day and all night with them. If I was lucky, they might become aware of my presence in a positive way and just feel comforted that their mum was with them then they could sleep soundly, assured in the knowledge that my love was all around them even when I was not physically able to hold them and cuddle them.

No wonder I awoke crying…..it’s simply a dream and not a possibility…..

[Don't worry - I'm not suicidal. Far from it, I would never do that to my kids and I feel no reason to do it since making a full recovery]

I dread going to sleep nowadays. Most nights I dream about missing my children, about them being taken away, about them being in trouble and not being able to help them, about having to witness their tears and not be able to wipe them away, about them growing up without me, forgetting that they had a mum. I can only sleep with a sleeping tablet and then I still wake up fretting with a dread in my stomach and memories of the dreams I’ve had floating in and out in the early hours.

I never tell the children I have these dreams. When they tell me of their own bad nightmares, they tell of dreams of me having my head chopped off or about being eaten by a giant spider or about being kidnapped and me not coming to rescue them. My youngest wakes up scared that I really have had my head chopped off and is constantly scared that her dream will come true. She’s fretting about whether I’m safe and whether I will die. No matter how much reassurance I give her, she’s not convinced that I’m alright. She’s often telling me that she loves me “to the moon, and all the way around the universe and every atom in the universe!…..” but then goes on to ask how much I love her, seeking constant reassurance that I do.

My son is being teased at school for the fact that his mum doesn’t live with him; they tease him in front of other boys saying “your mum doesn’t live with you” in a taunt, repeating it until my son has to walk away. What does he tell them? How does he explain? He can’t; he simply has to walk away, hurting. No other boy in the whole school has a mother who doesn’t live with her son. He has to nurse that hurt on his own. Unlike other children with divorced parents who can share their hurt, he can’t; his family story is different from everyone else’s. It’s acceptable to have a father living away, but there is no other mother who is……How does he explain that even to himself, let alone to anyone else….

No wonder we are all having nightmares; it is a nightmare, whether you are awake or asleep and there is no end in sight….this is not a dream, but a harsh reality that my children and I are living in and we won’t wake up to find that it’s just a dream…..it’s horribly real.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is very real for those suffering from it. My children are regularly having nightmares; my son (7) had such a bad one last week that he woke shaking and crying and so scared that I had to hold him tight in my arms all night to keep him calm. Each time I moved even slightly, he woke again and clung to me crying, pleading with me to hold on to him. He said that these awful creatures were trying to take him away from me and no matter where he ran and hid, they came to get him…..

My daughter (6) keeps having nightmares where she is being kidnapped by some stranger and I don’t come to her rescue; I am nowhere to be found even though she’s crying out for me….She dreamt that she had been thrown into an empty room and nobody came to give her food and she was in the dark not knowing where anybody was…She dreams that I have had my head chopped off. She repeatedly asks me whether anyone is going to kill me or chop my head off and is worrying about whether I am safe or not. She dreams of coffins floating down a river…she dreams of being attacked by witches, or other creatures who are nasty and scary for her.

It is clear that the children are suffering anxiety as a result of their separation from me, their mum. The children are not currently seeing a psychologist so no diagnosis has been given to them regarding any PTSD but if the symptoms are the same then I am surmising that they too are suffering with it and should be getting some help with their trauma.

Two influential psychoanalysts – John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott – have written extensively about the concept of separation and attachment. They suggested that a large proportion of anxieties and mental health problems are associated with separation between infant and mother in childhood. Their suggestion is that separation is not only distressing for a baby but can also cause anxieties in later life. They proposed that premature separation can lead to insecurity, which can lead to hostility, and that this hostility can interfere with the processes determining subsequent growth and development. All of this is said to trigger mourning at an age when a child is too young to manage such feelings, meaning that a child may be stuck in a state of despair or depression. Dreams of suffocation, separation, loss and abandonment may therefore be informative as they can tell the dreamer of an unresolved separation in their family. This is when feelings of mourning or hostility towards the parent or other family figure have not yet been explored or dealt with.

Separation anxiety occurs when we have to confront the prospect of being separated from someone who is considered essential to our physical or emotional survival. Typically, separation anxiety occurs in relation to family members or partners as these are the people with whom we normally have the closest relationships; the anxiety may often be reflected in nightmares and disturbing dreams.

Dreams of suffocation or nightmare scenarios involving the separation, death or loss of a family member or spouse are often triggered by separation anxiety and in many instances they can offer clues to help manage and resolve these feelings in waking life. [Taken from "The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 dreams" – Theresa Cheung].

I too am having nightmares – I dream of trying to find my children, of rescuing them from danger and of being ignored or unseen by others in the dream. The children are often in great danger yet I cannot reach them in my dream. I dreamt that my son was trapped under a collapsed building which had collapsed in an earthquake. The foundations of the building are sinking on top of him and he is crying out for me in desperation. I crawl under the building, calling out to him that I’m coming to get him but I can’t quite reach him – I hear his cries and please and the fear in his voice but I can’t quite get to him.

I dream of being unseen – a ghost to all around me including the children. These are typically of me being in my ex husband’s dream new home where he lives with the dream nanny/some other woman and the children are there. When I enter the room, they don’t see me; I talk to them, walk in front of them, sit next to them but it becomes apparent to me that I am invisible to them. I wander round the house unseen and unheard trying desperately to talk to or be with the children but they can’t see me so I am ignored. When they move from one room to another, I follow them into the different room hoping that they’ll see me in the room I’ve followed them into but they still don’t so I continue to remain invisible. There are domestic scenes of the children getting dressed, playing, eating their supper, tidying away their toys, but I cannot join in. I am left feeling helpless, tremendously sad, hurt, upset and feeling so terrible that I am there with my children but completely invisible so neither they nor I can be with each other. My dream of being a ghost meant that I could spend time with them without being told that I can’t be there….

I wake from these dreams sunk into a well of despair and have often woken up crying; I have started to cry in my dream and wake with the tears still flowing. I awake in shock and disbelief that my situation isn’t a dream and that I am living in a nightmare. I wake without my children in the house, without them coming jumping into my bed in the morning and to the silence of the house. I lie in bed for a while trying to come to terms with what has happened.  This usually takes me 2-3 hours in the following morning before I can function well enough again and then it plays on my mind for weeks at a time. I cannot get the images and feelings out of my mind.

Is this evidence that I am “mad”, “unstable” etc? If so, are my children “mad” too? Or are we all just suffering from being separated from each other?

My psychiatrist says that I am suffering from PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) and has given me sleeping tablets at night saying that these dreams usually stop after 6-8 months. It is his view that my experience of the Children’s Act proceedings, the subsequent judgement hearing and the separation from my children have all combined to cause me significant trauma and hence the diagnosis of PTSD. The research into PTSD states that, at first the dreams are incredibly intense and disturbing, but the sufferers report that these gradually become less vivid after around 6 – 9 months.

It has now been a year exactly since the judgement was handed down by the judge and I am still having these nightmares. How long will this continue?

The dream book referred to above is very useful to help understand the meaning of many of the dreams the children have and so I involve them with this interpretation; we look up the symbols of their dreams and then we talk about what their dreams might mean. This seems to help them put the “monsters”, the “baddies” and the horrible circumstances of their dreams (eg tidal waves, cracking ice, storms, lightning etc) into a context so that they can then understand what their dream is about. This reduces their anxiety. So, for example, if they dream about being carried away to sea by a tidal wave, I can explain to them that the sea is a very powerful expression of emotions – the stronger and more turbulent the sea is in the dream, the more powerful are their emotions. Once they understand this, they can then talk about what emotions they are feeling and so the tidal wave is then understandable and not something to be frightened of. This seems to be helpful to them.

Maybe it should be part of any co-parenting plan that a child suffering with recurrent nightmares should be referred to a psychologist for help with the trauma. I certainly will be seeking one for my children.

As for me, I will continue to try to see them as much as I can to reassure them that I have not gone from their lives and will always be there for them as often as I am permitted.

Is there anyone else out there suffering with these kind of nightmares? I’d love to hear from you.

Post script: It is now September 2008 – 18 months after I was forced to leave my home and my children and I am still having these nightmares as are the children…..If this is PTSD, then it is obviously a serious case of it. I still have to take sleeping tablets at night together with a medication to stop me from experiencing REM sleep which, according to my psychiatrist, is the best way to avoid having nightmares. It’s not working…..