The Impact of Trauma as a Young Woman

Agenda's Girls Speak campaign shines a light on the experiences of some of the most marginalised girls and young women. We spoke with Rebecca about the root causes of poor mental health for girls and young women. Trigger warning: the following account discusses suicide and suicidal thoughts.

I’m 26 now but I still need support. I’ve got no family support and no friends really, so the support workers here are the only support I’ve got.

Sometimes I just need to call and speak to my worker – it could be about the smallest, daftest things. It's knowing that I can ring them, oh my god it’s so good, it just gets things off my chest.

Coming here, it's confidence building. I really like the group sessions, I’ve done so much, like Escape the Trap, it helps you look at what went wrong, at relationships I don’t want in future. It’s really good, and it’s something different every time.

I think there needs to be more awareness for kids and stuff at school, from like 13 upwards – they need to know about being controlled and abused, people are scared to talk about that sort of stuff with kids so nobody talks about it.

People that I thought were nice to be back then… they just weren’t. Now ten years later I still don’t make good relationship decisions, but I’m better at spotting the signs and I walk away quicker than I did then.

You don’t take much from PSHE in schools. There’s so much taught about in schools I don’t think is relevant to me now. I think the curriculum needs to change to include things young women need to know about – like online abuse and social media and the effect it can have on people’s mental health.

I grew up with my dad beating my mum up. Then my mum passed away when I was 12 and he took to beating me up. Social services were involved quite a bit and they could have done more. I don’t think they did a good job when I was a kid. My dad had a good way of hiding things.

I ran away from home at about 15 or 16. I sofa surfed for a bit with friends, for about nine days - until my mum’s friend turned around and said, ‘You’ve really got to go to council now’, so I went to the main office in town.  They put me in a B&B for a couple of nights until they could find me somewhere.

When I went to the council, I told them about my dad being violent but nobody did anything about it and my little sister still lived at home.  Someone should have investigated it properly.

Because of my age, it wasn’t really social services' problem, but because I wasn’t over 18 it wasn’t the council’s problem.

In the space of two years I was in three different hostels. The first place I went to was temporary, for women and families. Because I was 16, I was one of the youngest service users, so they wanted to find me a proper hostel. Then I went to one in the middle of nowhere. It was a 20-bed, for young people. There were about 16 lads but only four lasses. Sometimes I was the only girl so I got terrorised - people trying to open the door while I was in the bath, constantly banging on the door, it was terrible.

I put up with it for two months but then they moved me to another one. I was there for over a year. I still speak to tThe people there now. It was just lovely – there were six people, everybody was so close and we all got on well. It was staffed 24/7 - I still go back and visit now. I wouldn’t be where I am now if it weren’t for the friends I made there, and the staff.

I got my first flat on my 18th birthday. Because it was my first taste of freedom, we were partying all the time. Then I fell pregnant. I didn’t find out until 25 weeks. It all just seemed to happen so quickly. I stayed in the flat for six or seven months. I moved when my little boy was seven months into a two-bed house.

I had other services involved then. The Family Nurse Partnership nurse was really good. I’d never even experienced being around kids before, so it just like a little class, little lessons I’d learn every time she came.

I can’t really remember what happened, looking back, but I was struggling a bit after my son was born. I’d admitted I was struggling to the family nurse, and she told social services. She lost my trust a bit after that.

When I was a kid, because of the experiences I had, social services were involved. No one wants social services involved so I didn’t want that for my own child. I understand why she did it now but I’d have preferred if she let me know first.

I felt like I was losing all my friends. I couldn’t go out and party all the time, so I was having people round quite a bit. I was struggling to keep the flat tidy. I didn’t think I could be a good mum.

My son’s dad wasn’t involved at all. That was a bit hard at the time, because then my family were a bit rubbish too. My dad would constantly put me down, criticised everything I did. I didn’t have any support from family or friends.

I wish I’d got more help for my mental health when I said I was struggling. Every time I went to the doctors they put me on anti-depressants. You need more than a tablet. And because of the mood I was in, I’d just forget to take them.

Part of the conditions social services put in place were to get help with mental health, but social services didn’t do anything to help me get it. I tried to get the help for myself but the waiting lists were so long. In the end I just gave up, because I didn’t think I could fix myself in the short amount of time they gave me.

Childcare was also a problem. At one point, my doctor did offer me counselling but I was worried about what it would be like when I came out of the sessions. I didn’t want to go and pick my son up from nursery when I still had all these horrible thoughts in my head. I didn’t have a support network to help me through it.

Social services got in touch with my son’s dad and they did a parenting assessment, so he’s with him now. I have contact once a month for two hours with him, I hate it. At the minute we’re having to do video calls. It’s mixed emotions. I hate that he has him - if he were around to start with, we probably wouldn’t be in this position. He let me down. I had to do all the hard part but now he gets to do all the good bits. I never get birthday cards or Christmas cards off my son. I feel like they just want me to disappear.

When my son got taken into care, where were my family then? They should have been there for me. They let me down. My dad didn’t speak to me from the day my son got taken off me. He let everyone know he was disappointed in me. He's still not reached out and asked to find out what happened. They never wanted to get to the bottom of it – why did no one ask me my side of the story?

I don’t think there’s enough services to support people with their mental health. I remember having a counsellor in school – after my mum died, because I was the one who found her, school got me a counsellor. We just did lots of colouring in, but looking back now I don’t think that helped me. Because you need to talk about things to get through it.

I’ve had all sorts, a family support worker, a multi-agency assessment team…I’ve had so many counsellors and support workers, but I don’t feel comfortable with 90% of them.

The only people I’ve felt comfortable talking to are real people, people who are trying to help you and who actually care. Not people who’ve just read things in a textbook and think, ‘Oh this is how you’re supposed to go about doing things’. I’d always trust support workers that related to what I was going through. That's why I like my worker so much, she’s experienced things.

And groups have really helped me – with people who have been through what you’ve been through, so you know you’re not on your own. So, you’re not embarrassed about what you’ve been through. Doing group work, even doing little things like cooking, helps; trips out, a walk.

I have good weeks and bad weeks, but one thing can really knock me down. Sometimes when my worker calls me, I’ve not been out of the house all week. But knowing that they are here really helps.

One thing I’ve struggled with is alcohol – if I don’t leave the house I’ll just drink and drink. I can get stuck in a right rut. When my son got taken from me, I was drinking more and more. I wish someone had stepped in and told me I had a problem with alcohol.  Because my family weren’t around, I didn’t have anyone to tell me that. Looking back, alcohol has always been my coping strategy.

When I’ve got a good routine, that helps. I set myself monthly goals now, and I tick things off. Even if I’ve had a rubbish day I can look and see, ‘Oh, I’ve hoovered’ and it makes me feel better. Every week it's not to drink, but that doesn’t always happen. At one time it was even having a shower. It’s what I need because I don’t see how bad I’m getting. I just sit in my own bubble sometimes. Because I’ve not got no family support, it’s hard.

I think I'm safe in the house, nowt can happen to me in the house. I get anxiety really bad getting on buses, I never know who I'm going to see. I get taxis everywhere because I can’t deal with public transport.

My worker, she tells me the truth. I know she has my best interests at heart. It’s important because it’s not like other services. Before I came here, I was on a college course and they told me all kind of dreams. When I first went to college they spoke to this project and said they were going to help with housing, and they agreed who was going to do what – but then they didn’t do what they said they were going to and it all went wrong.

I tried killing myself three times in one day once. And they were useless. They just said ‘oh we’ll see if we can get you referred’. I ended up going into a crisis house, with round the clock care, bars on the windows…it was a horrible place. From there I got referred back to community mental health – I was on the waiting list for years and I never saw anyone.

I went to assessments and was telling people how I felt, I was telling them I was going to kill myself but they said we’ll have to wait and see how you do. They said I can’t have been serious because otherwise I wouldn’t have told them.

I want to get trauma counselling. It’s all about money though, isn’t it? I’ve avoided it for ages but I can’t any more. Counselling’s not working and I need to sort out the trauma first and then move on to other things.

I want to have a good life for when my son comes back, so he can see I changed my life because of what happened. That’s the only thing I get out of bed for at minute because I want him to come back and be proud of me.

I'm not angry towards anybody any more - I can’t hold on to that.