Healing the Past, part Two

Someone told me early on at a support group that
"We are the cause of all our own pain."
This person was aware that there were survivors of
childhood trauma in this group. He reiterated his point
when I dared mention that children do not choose to draw
abuse into their lives.

I was enraged and resentful and hurt, and all the past
traumas came bubbling back up, relived once more. It
is never the place of another human being to assess or
dismiss our pain. We are not here to pass judgment on
one another in any respect. Perhaps he was dealing with
issues of his own in the only way he knew how, or perhaps
he was callous and insensitive.

The point is; I don't know his motives, and I can't be
concerned about his motives. The unfortunate thing is
that I allowed myself to become so upset by this one
statement that I stopped going to group for months. I
gave up something beneficial to me (here's a reoccurring
theme!) because of one isolated incident. I might could
have been of use to another person during that wasted
time, or I might have gotten support from others present.
But this is something we learned to do early on; give up,
isolate, shut down.

As defenseless children, we had no other options available
to us. One of the most difficult things for 'other people' to
understand is why people 'like us' stay stuck in the past,
frozen in a particular set of skills (or lack thereof.)
"Why can't you just get over it?"

Trauma brings forth such violent emotional charges that
it literally imprints actions and emotions onto our brain,
our body, and our psyche. Like an afterimage on a TV
screen or computer monitor after an image has been
maintained for so long. It lingers with us. The incidents
was so powerful that it superimposes itself on us. For
those who suffer continuous, repetitious abuse, it is
especially fused within us.

Even those who suppress the emotional response into the
subconscious mind (because of inability to fathom or cope in
our innocent state) are still affected at least internally by such
horrors.

We can suppress an external response, but the ill
effects, the schizoid tendencies, the obsessive patterns,
the self-destructive behaviors, the personality extremes
(of being a smart-ass, an abuser, emotionally unavailable,
a rager, a caretaker, a clown, a perfectionist, a loner) all
eventually come out.

The question is whether or not we can identify the correlation
between the emerging issues and the original underlying problems
that sparked them. Until we recognize that one thing is related
to the other, truly overcoming our problems can be difficult.
If we don't comprehend why we think the wrong things, why
certain situations cause fear, why some people make us uneasy...
it may be hard to correct the matter.

This is not a call to just start digging deep into old hurts and
channeling all that pain in an unsupervised, unsafe manner;
there is much in the way of proper preparation and healthy
planning to exploring these issues. But the willingness to begin
the journey can be a task in itself. So many years (and decades
even) of covering up pain, hiding aspects of ourselves, playing a
role for others, avoiding our feelings; these take time, effort,
and ease to overcome.

Healing the Past, part Three

I have a theory about abuse that explains a lot
in very simple means. I have not seen it covered in
books, so I'm unsure if this is something which has
been studied or not.

There is of course a phenomenon of people who suffer
abuse ending up suffering from attacks, traumas, and
more abuse systematically throughout their lives. The
tendency is for abuse survivors to implicate themselves
and believe that they had some sort of hand in the
abuse happening.

(This is a very common theme, causing
guilt and shame not just that this happened to us, but
taking on part or all of the responsibility. Further guilt
and shame are suffered if there was any portion of the
sexual abuse that caused arousal; surely our own minds
and bodies had betrayed us.

Many things account for these feelings of self-flagellation.
*Absorbing blame so that a 'loved one' could be "freed"
of being a bad person in the scenario.
*Refusal of our society to address the issue of children
having sexual capacities from early on (NOT that they are
intended to be used by adults!!!! Don't misunderstand that!)
*Total incomprehensibility of the insanity that has occurred
and a child (or young adult) being limited in intellect or
experience has to make 'sense' of it somehow.
*Whether implied or explicit, the abuser often displaces
responsibility for their own actions either before, during, or
after, and that energy has to go somewhere.
*Having a need to reconcile our lack of ability to even
conceive of fighting back.
...and so on.....

I think that the repetition factor in systematic abuse can be
explained by two rationales, however.

First, just as people who have survived can find one another
in a crowded room, so, too, can abusers find someone who
has already been wounded.

Children (or people, really) who have suffered a soul-draining
experience are affected on a molecular level. Whatever angle
you come at this from; social, emotional, psychological, spiritual,
scientific, mental--it's all the same. There has been a fundamental
shift in that person's psyche and soul as a result of the trauma.
People who wish to abuse another see that as both opportunity
and opening.

The lack of light is an advertisement to the darkness that this
is a 'safe' place to do your dirty, despicable deeds.

Perhaps abusers justify this by saying "I see something
in his/her eyes that seemed to be open to what I was
wanting." Justification and sick misinterpreting of reality.
Society on whole has a sickness when it comes to abusive
behavior; Blame the victim. It is far easier to heap
misfortune and blame on someone we know is 'accustomed'
to taking it (i.e., perhaps not likely to fight back?) and thus
a pattern is born.


Second, with each infraction, the soul is further diminished
until such a point that a survivor may:
- Stops caring about their own well-being,
- Become apathetic to the abuse, becomes desensitized to it,
- Begins to embrace warped thinking as normal; certainly
they don't expect or understand anything else, nothing else is
possible
- Seeks it out as punishment, having falsely believed themselves
to be bad, or damaged, or to blame
- Self-fulfilling prophecy kicks in, and the prior abuse affects
thinking and esteem and attitudes which then draw the type
of people who will take advantage of it, and the cycle continues.
(and many more possibilities.)

But there is a widespread pattern of recurring abuse,
repetitious patterns, systematic abuse..whatever you wish to call it.
Energy pushes in the same direction until we intercede. Like
attracts like. So, until we restructure our feelings and thoughts and
ideas about what kind of person we are and what we deserve,
it is highly likely that we will continue to attract unsavory people
throughout our lifetimes.

Even when we stop the abusive relationships, we continue with
self-abuse, however.

Healing the Past, part Five

Healing the Past, part Five

When we become fixated on a pain, a problem,
it can become larger and more prominent by
virtue of its constancy in our mind and heart.
Reliving such hurts also embeds them deeper
and deeper into our consciousness, like a
groove being worn into a surface from constant
use.

By dwelling on such horrors, we actually cause
them to drown out all other voices, all possible
light. The disappointment becomes an accepted
reality, and the obstacles seeming insurmountability
become our fate rather than our assumption.

Pain relived is intensified and strengthened with
each re-sensing. It becomes an entity unto
itself.

We are no longer open to new things, or people, or
possibilities. Or friends, family, or love. We guard
against anything hopeful because we have learned to
stifle vulnerability and hope and happiness. We don't
trust that opening ourselves up to such things can bring
anything but disaster.

Is there anything more dreadful than a life without trust?

Overcoming these depressive, anti-social, defensive
tendencies takes time and effort. Study. Retraining.
Risk. Focus. Getting back up when we fall down, no
matter how many times that is. We have to first decide
that we are at least willing to be open to life. That maybe
we overlooked some goodness and light in the world.

That we are deserving of the chance to find out.

We have to be okay with letting go of the baggage of the
past, unsure where the future is taking us. This is major.

We must stop being silent. It is insanity to continue living
our lives based on the best efforts of a wounded younger
person. No matter how well those reactions served us in
making it through, now comes the time for taking the
reigns of our own wellness. Allowing others in, recognizing
that we are not the sum of our fears and mistakes and
history.

There can be no shame without our approval. We must speak
out against our bondage, and say aloud what has torn away
at us. When we share our pain, it is shown the light of day,
and loses portions of its mystical hold over us. The darkness
burns away as we realize that others have known our pain,
but were also afraid to speak truth and be fully seen.

We are not identified by what has happened to us, nor are we
identified exclusively by what we have done in our acting out.
These are lies that were told by ourselves and others to
prevent transformation from taking place. There is an entire
world of possibility outside the dark and secretive corners of
our minds. We cannot afford the silence anymore.

The stoic husband, the doting daughter, the icy controller; these
are not roles that fulfill our purpose in the world. They were
temporary containers to help transport us from the pain of the
past to a safe place where healing can begin.

As they say, we are only as sick as our secrets. By releasing the
hold on secrets, we release their hold on us. We find out that
the power they maintained in our hypothetical worst case
scenarios was nothing remotely related to reality. We dwelt on
the dark past until it tainted our present and even the future, but
that was imaginings.

When we allow others access to our world, and we allow ourselves
access to the outside world, we discover that there is more to the
universe than our limited perspective. Hearing what others think,
even when critical and disagreeable, can be the catharsis for
a new understanding as to what is real and what was leftover insane
thinking.

Without light, there can be no growth. And many of us locked
ourselves into deep, dark, isolated places to avoid everything...
including the light.

I bring up sex in the context of recovery because sex is integral.
Sex is part of identity, whether we have good notions or bad in
its expression. I daresay most every addict either had their sex
lives affected adversely by their addiction, or came to addiction
because their sex lives (by choice or lack of voice) had adversely
affected their lives. It is not an outside issue.

Not addressing sex and its impact on our lives is part of the
warped, schizoid, puritanical, oppressive thinking that led most
of us into a program of recovery in the first place. Not allowing
people in the rooms to discuss what their needs and history are
without fear of further judgment or shame is a crime. It allows
those of us most in need of help to be victimized all over again.

Suppressing truth is part of the sickness. Lies kill.

Today, I will be a part of the solution.
I will speak my truth.
I will not be defined by others' limitations.

There are others who have these histories, these feelings, these
pains. They live silently fearing that anyone might ever find out.
They live a double life, even in recovery. No one should ever
have to apologize for who they are or where they come from.
Speaking up is the first step to insure that doesn't happen again.