Healing from child abuse
Moving on - Part 3 - My greatest lessons
21/10/08 12:12 Filed in: Psychology | Child Abuse
This will be my twelfth post on coming to terms with, recovery and healing from child abuse. I feel I have only a little more to say. That may change; often the interaction with others causes me to remember feelings and issues that have been important to me.
This has been a very personal account. In some ways, I was fortunate, in other ways, less so. Everyone is different.
By the time I was at the healing stage I had to take a good long look at my behaviour. I’ll say more, but I should have done things that I didn’t properly understand or know about at the time. I was in and out of therapy. Since I had an involvement in mental health through my work I also had ready access to others working in mental health, both therapists and psychiatrists. This was a mixed blessing. On reflection, my own knowledge of issues around child abuse now far exceeds that of most professionals I knew then.
On the face of it, at the time, I had many positive behaviours that had value in my life. I had excellent social skills. Similarly, through my work, I had competences in assertiveness, listening, communication, decision-making, negotiation, conflict resolution and leadership skills. Those things came with the territory that was my work. I was chief executive of one organisation and chairman of the board of another. I was used to functioning in public. I gave media interviews, appeared on radio and television, I could get on my feet and engage and hold the attention of over a hundred people in a talk or presentation.
If only life was that simple.
A lot of my behaviour, although it appeared charismatic sometimes, was flawed and had its roots in dysfunction and coping mechanisms that I had learned in early life.
I had good social skills but I was frequently a “pleaser”. I would behave unconsciously in a way so as to strike agreement and accord with others, despite my own feelings, beliefs and values. I wanted to be liked, to be popular, but my inner self still held the memories of abuse that I was a freak, unlikeable and even repulsive. I looked like a competent leader, but I was solitary and heroic. I was forever struggling with feelings of deep inadequacy I had within myself. I was a perfectionist. I was wresting with words from my father that went, “Not good enough! Not good enough! Not good enough!” over and over.
Heroism and perfectionism combined meant that I would make hoops to jump through, ever higher and higher, until such time as I fell flat on my face. Then there was no one there to catch or support me and I would start over again.
I had big problems in setting boundaries and limits in personal relationships. I entered abusive relationships by the score.
There are many more examples I could cite, but those are sufficient to make the point. Many of the personal traits that others may have regarded as positive in me were not. They had their roots in my early life experience of abuse.
This gave me a truly massive problem. My life was a nexus of hundreds of relationships both through my work and personally. Being bad at setting limits, I had no privacy. Whenever I wanted to retreat and have quiet time to myself, others would come clamouring to my door or call me incessantly on the phone. Through my coping mechanism of taking responsibility to free me from the dependence on others so that they could not harm me, I had created no end of unhealthy dependencies on me, mainly from those unable or unwilling to take responsibility for their own life. I cannot begin to describe how horrific this was. I had a married female colleague who had accidents every time I withdrew from her dependency on me. At first, I thought it was accidental and unfortunate. Then I noticed the same behaviour over and over. If I moved away then she would break her leg or crash her car. Her accidents were always succeeded by cries for help. I tried to help, but I needed her to try to help herself too. She never did, nor did her husband. She had married a much older man who treated her as a child. She was an abused child and had married a new daddy. She wanted me to be her daddy too.
This was a nightmare. People at my main place of work would rail at me for what they feared would be my imminent desertion of them. Predators who were jealous of me saw my withdrawal as an opportunity to take things from me. So-called friends would call me up and scream hysterically down the phone. One particularly nasty piece of work, a psychiatrist, saw his opportunity to use some of the most manipulative behaviour I have ever witnessed, in order to sleep with my girlfriend at the time. He tried to convince her and others that I was going mad and should be certified for my own protection. He failed. I had stronger allies than he could handle. Subsequently, he was struck off and I celebrated. His little plot was seized upon by another senior colleague and a professional adviser of mine, who speculated that they might be able to take control of my personal assets that included a controlling interest in a profitable business. They failed too. I fired them both. These are a few examples to make a point. There were many, many more.
Not all therapists and psychiatrists are good people. I knew two who drew much of their own sense of self-worth from the power their profession gave them over others. Needless to say, they fought my recovery too. They told me I had a fragmented personality, that I was disordered and split. I let this have a profound effect on me. What they were suggesting were symptoms I associated with a schizoid disorder. This was a complete nonsense but it influenced me to behave in a way that I now know to have been very misguided.
Now here’s the point: What I should have done is taken stock and made an inventory of all the problem areas in my life. It would have been a big list. So many areas of my life were causing me to feel downright miserable and unhappy. There were a few glimpses of light here and there, but my work, social and personal relationships were in the main unhealthy and founded on a legacy of problems from my early life.
Looking back, as frightening as it may have seemed at the time, I should have taken the sheet of paper that was my life, screwed it up, chucked it in the bin and started again. I should have refocused on pursuits and friendships that would have brought me happiness. Instead, I sought to maintain some level of continuity in answer to those critics who had called my life and me fragmented.
I got it badly wrong.
Instead I struggled on through. I tried to hold it all together as untenable as it was. Slowly, all the parts of my life I had tried to hold onto crumbled and fell away. Far from a celebration of self-determination, I spent my time clasping at straws and emptiness, trying to piece back together that which I should have let go.
This is my biggest mistake and my biggest lesson. I wasted years of my life, more than twelve years, dealing with its consequences. I continued to work in an area I disliked, when I could have given others and myself so much more by being true to myself. I could have had better and more positive close relationships. The only consolation I have is that I know that now, and I work to change. It is as if the burden of some ten-ton load has been lifted from me.
Finally, I want to say something more about healing. I wrote earlier:
“True healing involves seeing and knowing what is wrong and having the compassion to call it into change.
…It…means that you don’t beat yourself up mercilessly for your past mistakes. Love also means finding responsibility and compassion.
To heal means that you have to see your life for what it truly is. It is being honest about your emotional pain and all the dreadful mistakes and errors that you have made in trying to hide from your despair. Then you have to listen to that despair with compassion and tenderness and let it tell you its own whole story. Only then will your heart be transformed.”
I have talked to a couple of readers here about this already. It’s so very important. I know both these readers extend tenderness, love and compassion to others, but rarely to themselves. They also beat themselves up mercilessly for the suffering of their past. They indulge in self-blame that is so characteristic of abuse. I understand and I have done that too. Beating yourself up will never work. Healing need not be so painful. It is a release too. If you beat yourself up over what has been done to you by others, then sooner or later, you will give up. You cannot change what they did. The suffering will go on. Giving up is not an answer.
My training therapist was a wonderful man. At one time, he was beaten out of my life by the bad guys. In parting I’d like to share some of his words with you. They were in response to my endless questions about what I should do with my life:
“Listen to your heart and hear its message, only then will you discover your own truth…Be true to your heart and to yourself. Keep writing your story, the story of your own life. It may be time for the next chapter…”
I finished writing my first novel in the summer. It’s overlong and needs a lot of editing, but it occurs to me that so many things I say here first emerged in the process of writing that story. It was liberating. The theme of listening and being true to one’s heart recurs over and over in that story. I have heard my own heart’s message. Finally, a few weeks back, I decided on a title for my book. It’s called, “Love’s Passage.”
I’m working on a second book too. This one is a children’s story. It’s a celebration of playfulness written by the now happy small boy who lives inside me. It’s not based on the deep philosophy and psychology of “Love’s Passage”. It’s called, “The Dustbin King”. It’s very funny. It could even be a story for a film, an animated cartoon most probably. More about my books on Farrago later.
This has been a very personal account. In some ways, I was fortunate, in other ways, less so. Everyone is different.
By the time I was at the healing stage I had to take a good long look at my behaviour. I’ll say more, but I should have done things that I didn’t properly understand or know about at the time. I was in and out of therapy. Since I had an involvement in mental health through my work I also had ready access to others working in mental health, both therapists and psychiatrists. This was a mixed blessing. On reflection, my own knowledge of issues around child abuse now far exceeds that of most professionals I knew then.
On the face of it, at the time, I had many positive behaviours that had value in my life. I had excellent social skills. Similarly, through my work, I had competences in assertiveness, listening, communication, decision-making, negotiation, conflict resolution and leadership skills. Those things came with the territory that was my work. I was chief executive of one organisation and chairman of the board of another. I was used to functioning in public. I gave media interviews, appeared on radio and television, I could get on my feet and engage and hold the attention of over a hundred people in a talk or presentation.
If only life was that simple.
A lot of my behaviour, although it appeared charismatic sometimes, was flawed and had its roots in dysfunction and coping mechanisms that I had learned in early life.
I had good social skills but I was frequently a “pleaser”. I would behave unconsciously in a way so as to strike agreement and accord with others, despite my own feelings, beliefs and values. I wanted to be liked, to be popular, but my inner self still held the memories of abuse that I was a freak, unlikeable and even repulsive. I looked like a competent leader, but I was solitary and heroic. I was forever struggling with feelings of deep inadequacy I had within myself. I was a perfectionist. I was wresting with words from my father that went, “Not good enough! Not good enough! Not good enough!” over and over.
Heroism and perfectionism combined meant that I would make hoops to jump through, ever higher and higher, until such time as I fell flat on my face. Then there was no one there to catch or support me and I would start over again.
I had big problems in setting boundaries and limits in personal relationships. I entered abusive relationships by the score.
There are many more examples I could cite, but those are sufficient to make the point. Many of the personal traits that others may have regarded as positive in me were not. They had their roots in my early life experience of abuse.
This gave me a truly massive problem. My life was a nexus of hundreds of relationships both through my work and personally. Being bad at setting limits, I had no privacy. Whenever I wanted to retreat and have quiet time to myself, others would come clamouring to my door or call me incessantly on the phone. Through my coping mechanism of taking responsibility to free me from the dependence on others so that they could not harm me, I had created no end of unhealthy dependencies on me, mainly from those unable or unwilling to take responsibility for their own life. I cannot begin to describe how horrific this was. I had a married female colleague who had accidents every time I withdrew from her dependency on me. At first, I thought it was accidental and unfortunate. Then I noticed the same behaviour over and over. If I moved away then she would break her leg or crash her car. Her accidents were always succeeded by cries for help. I tried to help, but I needed her to try to help herself too. She never did, nor did her husband. She had married a much older man who treated her as a child. She was an abused child and had married a new daddy. She wanted me to be her daddy too.
This was a nightmare. People at my main place of work would rail at me for what they feared would be my imminent desertion of them. Predators who were jealous of me saw my withdrawal as an opportunity to take things from me. So-called friends would call me up and scream hysterically down the phone. One particularly nasty piece of work, a psychiatrist, saw his opportunity to use some of the most manipulative behaviour I have ever witnessed, in order to sleep with my girlfriend at the time. He tried to convince her and others that I was going mad and should be certified for my own protection. He failed. I had stronger allies than he could handle. Subsequently, he was struck off and I celebrated. His little plot was seized upon by another senior colleague and a professional adviser of mine, who speculated that they might be able to take control of my personal assets that included a controlling interest in a profitable business. They failed too. I fired them both. These are a few examples to make a point. There were many, many more.
Not all therapists and psychiatrists are good people. I knew two who drew much of their own sense of self-worth from the power their profession gave them over others. Needless to say, they fought my recovery too. They told me I had a fragmented personality, that I was disordered and split. I let this have a profound effect on me. What they were suggesting were symptoms I associated with a schizoid disorder. This was a complete nonsense but it influenced me to behave in a way that I now know to have been very misguided.
Now here’s the point: What I should have done is taken stock and made an inventory of all the problem areas in my life. It would have been a big list. So many areas of my life were causing me to feel downright miserable and unhappy. There were a few glimpses of light here and there, but my work, social and personal relationships were in the main unhealthy and founded on a legacy of problems from my early life.
Looking back, as frightening as it may have seemed at the time, I should have taken the sheet of paper that was my life, screwed it up, chucked it in the bin and started again. I should have refocused on pursuits and friendships that would have brought me happiness. Instead, I sought to maintain some level of continuity in answer to those critics who had called my life and me fragmented.
I got it badly wrong.
Instead I struggled on through. I tried to hold it all together as untenable as it was. Slowly, all the parts of my life I had tried to hold onto crumbled and fell away. Far from a celebration of self-determination, I spent my time clasping at straws and emptiness, trying to piece back together that which I should have let go.
This is my biggest mistake and my biggest lesson. I wasted years of my life, more than twelve years, dealing with its consequences. I continued to work in an area I disliked, when I could have given others and myself so much more by being true to myself. I could have had better and more positive close relationships. The only consolation I have is that I know that now, and I work to change. It is as if the burden of some ten-ton load has been lifted from me.
Finally, I want to say something more about healing. I wrote earlier:
“True healing involves seeing and knowing what is wrong and having the compassion to call it into change.
…It…means that you don’t beat yourself up mercilessly for your past mistakes. Love also means finding responsibility and compassion.
To heal means that you have to see your life for what it truly is. It is being honest about your emotional pain and all the dreadful mistakes and errors that you have made in trying to hide from your despair. Then you have to listen to that despair with compassion and tenderness and let it tell you its own whole story. Only then will your heart be transformed.”
I have talked to a couple of readers here about this already. It’s so very important. I know both these readers extend tenderness, love and compassion to others, but rarely to themselves. They also beat themselves up mercilessly for the suffering of their past. They indulge in self-blame that is so characteristic of abuse. I understand and I have done that too. Beating yourself up will never work. Healing need not be so painful. It is a release too. If you beat yourself up over what has been done to you by others, then sooner or later, you will give up. You cannot change what they did. The suffering will go on. Giving up is not an answer.
My training therapist was a wonderful man. At one time, he was beaten out of my life by the bad guys. In parting I’d like to share some of his words with you. They were in response to my endless questions about what I should do with my life:
“Listen to your heart and hear its message, only then will you discover your own truth…Be true to your heart and to yourself. Keep writing your story, the story of your own life. It may be time for the next chapter…”
I finished writing my first novel in the summer. It’s overlong and needs a lot of editing, but it occurs to me that so many things I say here first emerged in the process of writing that story. It was liberating. The theme of listening and being true to one’s heart recurs over and over in that story. I have heard my own heart’s message. Finally, a few weeks back, I decided on a title for my book. It’s called, “Love’s Passage.”
I’m working on a second book too. This one is a children’s story. It’s a celebration of playfulness written by the now happy small boy who lives inside me. It’s not based on the deep philosophy and psychology of “Love’s Passage”. It’s called, “The Dustbin King”. It’s very funny. It could even be a story for a film, an animated cartoon most probably. More about my books on Farrago later.
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Moving on - Part 2 - A matter of trust
In my last blog, “Moving on - Part 1”, I talked about trust in perhaps what was a rather ingenuous way. I’d like to explore trust a little more, and hope you might join with me in doing that! Writing for me is often about exploration of thoughts and feelings rather than the presentation of firm ideas. It’s a journey with lots of diversions en route!
I’m always curious about etymology; the word trust probably came from a number of Germanic roots that meant comfort, confidence, consolation, faithful and help. Its origins go back to the twelfth century and before. The word, “trustworthiness” did not appear until well into the industrial revolution in the early nineteenth century.
Trust exists on a number of levels. At its most basic level, it might mean belief in the honesty of another. On the next rung up the trust ladder, it might mean a sense of faith or belief in another’s honesty, reliability, competence and benevolence. This is elementary trust.
Trust is not a virtue, since criminals might trust each other and there may be, “honour among thieves.”
I do not believe that anyone is wholly trustworthy or honest in this way, either to others or themselves. We are all faulted and fallible.
Without the notion of trust, ideas of betrayal and forgiveness could not exist.
Betrayal is also a central motif of Christian religion. God allowed his son, Jesus, to be put to death on the cross, where he uttered the words, “father, father, why hast thou forsaken me?” Is that not the ultimate betrayal? Jesus was betrayed by Judas, by the denials of Peter, and by his sleeping disciples. I’m not a Christian, but I do nevertheless believe that Christianity, like all religions, contains powerful archetypical images that uphold its wide appeal. Is not the story of the crucifixion about the ultimate untrustworthiness of humankind? Perhaps the power of that story is not about the absurdity of the resurrection and the ascension, but in Jesus’s return to those who he loved without rancour or bitterness, that he rose above that unfaithfulness without blame. Perhaps one might extend a notion of the crucifixion to signify not physical death, but the pain of human frailty as manifested in primal betrayal.
I am not sure if there is any greater betrayal than that experienced in child abuse. It is the ultimate crime and the ultimate betrayal. It is an exercise of brutal power by an abuser over an innocent and helpless child. It is corrupt and corrupting. In the last resort, the child may feel that their powerless complicity is an act whereby they betrayed themselves. The weight of guilt and shame carried by the abused victim often causes them to betray themselves over and over again through self-harming behaviours that may include their engagement in other abusive relationships later in their adult life.
I have no difficulties in extending elementary trust to anyone. I am not paranoid and I extend that trust to others freely in the course of my adult life. As one of my friends commented, if I am let down by that trust, it is the failure of the other, not me. Trust of this type is at the centre of all human relationships, including those at work. It is empowering of others too.
What moved me to tears in “Moving on, part 1” was not any issue around elementary trust, but a deeper feeling about something that I might call intimate trust. Intimate trust is the deepest act of human understanding. The work of creating intimate trust is, as I wrote earlier, “realising and expressing our inmost self in relationship with others, and supporting them in expressing their inmost self with us. Expressing our inmost self can mean revealing our feelings and needs, our dreams and hopes, our fears and joys and worries, our creative insights, our secrets and our pain . . . all the inner, personal aspects of ourselves. It does not matter at all, for the purpose of intimacy, whether we express "positive" aspects of ourselves such as joy, love, attraction and excitement, or "negative" experiences like fear, sadness, shame or anger.” Intimate trust is the loving act of entrusting someone else with your feelings, your inner being and your emotional and physical welfare. It is knowing that another will be there for you at a time of your deepest need, that they will not walk away and leave one suffering when their loving care matters most. Intimate trust carries with it no judgments either. It is accepting of mortality. It is the deepest form of trust, I believe.
In some ways, intimate trust has less to do with honesty that is the most common connotation of trust. Perhaps, it has more to do with the etymological root of the word, something that is a faithful, loving and accepting helpfulness. Intimate trust is an act of love, but not all that is taken as love in our world carries with it that sort of trust. A love without intimate trust is one that I would find very difficult to sustain. I have never found this intimate trust in my life so far; I have experienced love of sorts, but I doubt that I have yet known true love. I recognise that there are people who care for me very deeply nevertheless.
I have made great progress in healing. I am, at least, able to extend intimate trust and love to myself. I know I could extend it to others too. That may be the biggest step in my journey. It may be the only one. I don’t know. To develop intimate trust completely means that one experiences it through positive reinforcement in a way where it becomes an experience that overwhelms one’s earlier experience of abuse. I may be crazy but I remain hopeful…I am also cautious and watchful, as I have no desire to experience primal betrayal again.
I’m always curious about etymology; the word trust probably came from a number of Germanic roots that meant comfort, confidence, consolation, faithful and help. Its origins go back to the twelfth century and before. The word, “trustworthiness” did not appear until well into the industrial revolution in the early nineteenth century.
Trust exists on a number of levels. At its most basic level, it might mean belief in the honesty of another. On the next rung up the trust ladder, it might mean a sense of faith or belief in another’s honesty, reliability, competence and benevolence. This is elementary trust.
Trust is not a virtue, since criminals might trust each other and there may be, “honour among thieves.”
I do not believe that anyone is wholly trustworthy or honest in this way, either to others or themselves. We are all faulted and fallible.
Without the notion of trust, ideas of betrayal and forgiveness could not exist.
Betrayal is also a central motif of Christian religion. God allowed his son, Jesus, to be put to death on the cross, where he uttered the words, “father, father, why hast thou forsaken me?” Is that not the ultimate betrayal? Jesus was betrayed by Judas, by the denials of Peter, and by his sleeping disciples. I’m not a Christian, but I do nevertheless believe that Christianity, like all religions, contains powerful archetypical images that uphold its wide appeal. Is not the story of the crucifixion about the ultimate untrustworthiness of humankind? Perhaps the power of that story is not about the absurdity of the resurrection and the ascension, but in Jesus’s return to those who he loved without rancour or bitterness, that he rose above that unfaithfulness without blame. Perhaps one might extend a notion of the crucifixion to signify not physical death, but the pain of human frailty as manifested in primal betrayal.
I am not sure if there is any greater betrayal than that experienced in child abuse. It is the ultimate crime and the ultimate betrayal. It is an exercise of brutal power by an abuser over an innocent and helpless child. It is corrupt and corrupting. In the last resort, the child may feel that their powerless complicity is an act whereby they betrayed themselves. The weight of guilt and shame carried by the abused victim often causes them to betray themselves over and over again through self-harming behaviours that may include their engagement in other abusive relationships later in their adult life.
I have no difficulties in extending elementary trust to anyone. I am not paranoid and I extend that trust to others freely in the course of my adult life. As one of my friends commented, if I am let down by that trust, it is the failure of the other, not me. Trust of this type is at the centre of all human relationships, including those at work. It is empowering of others too.
What moved me to tears in “Moving on, part 1” was not any issue around elementary trust, but a deeper feeling about something that I might call intimate trust. Intimate trust is the deepest act of human understanding. The work of creating intimate trust is, as I wrote earlier, “realising and expressing our inmost self in relationship with others, and supporting them in expressing their inmost self with us. Expressing our inmost self can mean revealing our feelings and needs, our dreams and hopes, our fears and joys and worries, our creative insights, our secrets and our pain . . . all the inner, personal aspects of ourselves. It does not matter at all, for the purpose of intimacy, whether we express "positive" aspects of ourselves such as joy, love, attraction and excitement, or "negative" experiences like fear, sadness, shame or anger.” Intimate trust is the loving act of entrusting someone else with your feelings, your inner being and your emotional and physical welfare. It is knowing that another will be there for you at a time of your deepest need, that they will not walk away and leave one suffering when their loving care matters most. Intimate trust carries with it no judgments either. It is accepting of mortality. It is the deepest form of trust, I believe.
In some ways, intimate trust has less to do with honesty that is the most common connotation of trust. Perhaps, it has more to do with the etymological root of the word, something that is a faithful, loving and accepting helpfulness. Intimate trust is an act of love, but not all that is taken as love in our world carries with it that sort of trust. A love without intimate trust is one that I would find very difficult to sustain. I have never found this intimate trust in my life so far; I have experienced love of sorts, but I doubt that I have yet known true love. I recognise that there are people who care for me very deeply nevertheless.
I have made great progress in healing. I am, at least, able to extend intimate trust and love to myself. I know I could extend it to others too. That may be the biggest step in my journey. It may be the only one. I don’t know. To develop intimate trust completely means that one experiences it through positive reinforcement in a way where it becomes an experience that overwhelms one’s earlier experience of abuse. I may be crazy but I remain hopeful…I am also cautious and watchful, as I have no desire to experience primal betrayal again.
Moving on - Part 1 - new lessons
17/10/08 14:20 Filed in: Psychology | Child Abuse
It’s time to move on. I came to terms with child abuse. I made it past the painful recollections, and re-experiencing past pain and anger. I made some sort of forgiving peace with myself. I had good support, help and guidance to do that. I had not prepared myself properly for what followed, nor did I know how to do that. I was in uncharted territory and knew not where to go from here.
Living with a legacy of abuse has so many harmful consequences. One pays scant regard to one’s own welfare. One does not care properly for oneself. One engages in self-destructive habits and abusive personal relationships. One, perhaps, uses work in an unhealthy way. The consequences of all these behaviours take a mass of unravelling. I’ve been doing it for years and years it seems. I still am. I have realisations, even today, that my behaviour now can be based on negative or potentially self-harming or destructive instincts. I’m beginning to see much more clearly now and writing about it here has helped. It’s helped me to put a structure on what was a large amorphous mess.
Today, I’m going to write about another aspect of the journey of recovery and healing. There are many more, but I need to write about this to articulate and understand my feelings about healing better. My voyage of healing beyond the point of confrontation has been an experiential and sometimes, experimental journey. I wished I had had more help and guidance, but there is scant understanding of these issues out there. I have even seen adaptations of the recovery programme from alcoholics anonymous being made for child abuse sufferers. While laudable in some respects, that doesn’t quite cut the mustard for me. There are far too many differences in the nature of the difficulties and the issues one has to face. Child abuse and alcoholism bear no relation one to the other, although one can be consequent upon the other. That’s the only real parallel I see.
I felt having got through remembering, recognition and the first phase of reconciliation that my healing would proceed on its own. How wrong I was! Suddenly, I got a very rude shock. I became very depressed and I did not properly understand why. I don’t mean that I felt routinely fed up either. I felt the black, bleak overwhelming darkness and lethargy of depression.
I couldn’t find myself anymore. It was like I had suffered a profound loss but did not understand what it was. I even took myself off to the doctors and was prescribed anti-depressants. They didn’t help much either, so I stopped taking them.
It was hell. Subsequently I made a discovery. Part of the recovery from abuse is about experiencing a profound loss, loss of part of oneself, loss of the childhood I never had, loss of the parents I may have once falsely idealised. Loss is written everywhere and I did not understand. I simply did not understand, but went coasting along expecting to get better. It didn’t happen.
This loss is like real bereavement. In some ways it can feel worse than that, since one is bereft of parts of oneself, parts of one’s own inner being. Like with any bereavement, one needs to mourn the loss. Mourning this loss requires a great deal of patience and self-compassion. It cannot be rushed either. One may feel better having moved through the first phase of recovery, but there is still the process of healing. I, like many, didn’t understand this stage at the time, and I suppose I believed I could skip over it. By then, I was convinced I was a survivor after all.
What was true was that when I surfaced from depression, I did feel better. That’s for sure. There was another factor in play here that I know did not help me. I’ll talk about that now.
To survive, I had developed an aggressive independence. I stood my own ground absolutely on my own. Others may have experienced me as a caring, loving man. I know that to be true. It’s who I am. But deep down, I allowed no one to get close to me. No one at all; what’s more I distrusted everybody. This is one hell of an admission, I can tell you. I saw any form of dependency as being dangerous and unhealthy. It didn’t matter if it was healthy or not, I regarded dependency as the same irrespective of who else was involved or how trustworthy they were. I doubted my ability to tell the difference as well. Basically, I did not know how or who to trust. I had never learned that lesson. I made my way entirely on my own.
Of course, if one doesn’t trust, one cannot sustain intimate relationships. That is an absolute fact. I’ve written all about the importance of trust here. I know it to be important too. There is a big difference between knowing and knowing how to do it. This is giving me a real shaking up this morning. I’m going to stop writing now for a while as tears are rolling down my face and steaming up my reading glasses. I can’t see what I’m typing anymore.
Back! I wrote somewhere down the page a quote from James Hillman although I believe he was quoting someone else. I don’t have the book to hand. It went, “In all trust are the seeds of betrayal”. I went on to argue that love supplanted and subsumed trust since I believed that if one trusted, one would inevitably be betrayed, but if one loved, one would not. I’ve changed my mind. I believe that love and trust go together, and neither one implies the other. In short, one needs both to sustain an intimate relationship.
There’s something of a catch 22 here. It’s this: If one is unable to trust then inevitably one builds untrustworthy relationships. I should write that out like a schoolboy writing lines.
To really get past and get over the block of mourning, one needs to be able to share the most vulnerable parts of oneself with others. It is only this act of trust that can transform one’s fear of being hurt and betrayed. To get through this stage, means that one has to allow oneself to experience healthy dependency. I’m not sure if I have ever done that in my life. Even when I almost died last year, I resolved to nurse myself back to health independently. I made it too, but at what cost? I wonder now. The word “dependency” still sticks in my throat even now. To heal properly, one needs to feel the care of others. Not only does one need to be able to accept that care, but one needs the caring of others in order to heal.
I hope I can find my way to trust now. I feel an awful empty space inside.
In my next posts I will share more of what I believe the process of healing from child abuse entails. These are my new life’s lessons. My reservations about trust are profound. In doing what I’m doing now, someone close to me will tell me soon that I’m wasting my time here self-indulgently. I doubt that I will trust them, nor will I allow them to care for me. Also, and here's the rub, I doubt if they trust me either.
Living with a legacy of abuse has so many harmful consequences. One pays scant regard to one’s own welfare. One does not care properly for oneself. One engages in self-destructive habits and abusive personal relationships. One, perhaps, uses work in an unhealthy way. The consequences of all these behaviours take a mass of unravelling. I’ve been doing it for years and years it seems. I still am. I have realisations, even today, that my behaviour now can be based on negative or potentially self-harming or destructive instincts. I’m beginning to see much more clearly now and writing about it here has helped. It’s helped me to put a structure on what was a large amorphous mess.
Today, I’m going to write about another aspect of the journey of recovery and healing. There are many more, but I need to write about this to articulate and understand my feelings about healing better. My voyage of healing beyond the point of confrontation has been an experiential and sometimes, experimental journey. I wished I had had more help and guidance, but there is scant understanding of these issues out there. I have even seen adaptations of the recovery programme from alcoholics anonymous being made for child abuse sufferers. While laudable in some respects, that doesn’t quite cut the mustard for me. There are far too many differences in the nature of the difficulties and the issues one has to face. Child abuse and alcoholism bear no relation one to the other, although one can be consequent upon the other. That’s the only real parallel I see.
I felt having got through remembering, recognition and the first phase of reconciliation that my healing would proceed on its own. How wrong I was! Suddenly, I got a very rude shock. I became very depressed and I did not properly understand why. I don’t mean that I felt routinely fed up either. I felt the black, bleak overwhelming darkness and lethargy of depression.
I couldn’t find myself anymore. It was like I had suffered a profound loss but did not understand what it was. I even took myself off to the doctors and was prescribed anti-depressants. They didn’t help much either, so I stopped taking them.
It was hell. Subsequently I made a discovery. Part of the recovery from abuse is about experiencing a profound loss, loss of part of oneself, loss of the childhood I never had, loss of the parents I may have once falsely idealised. Loss is written everywhere and I did not understand. I simply did not understand, but went coasting along expecting to get better. It didn’t happen.
This loss is like real bereavement. In some ways it can feel worse than that, since one is bereft of parts of oneself, parts of one’s own inner being. Like with any bereavement, one needs to mourn the loss. Mourning this loss requires a great deal of patience and self-compassion. It cannot be rushed either. One may feel better having moved through the first phase of recovery, but there is still the process of healing. I, like many, didn’t understand this stage at the time, and I suppose I believed I could skip over it. By then, I was convinced I was a survivor after all.
What was true was that when I surfaced from depression, I did feel better. That’s for sure. There was another factor in play here that I know did not help me. I’ll talk about that now.
To survive, I had developed an aggressive independence. I stood my own ground absolutely on my own. Others may have experienced me as a caring, loving man. I know that to be true. It’s who I am. But deep down, I allowed no one to get close to me. No one at all; what’s more I distrusted everybody. This is one hell of an admission, I can tell you. I saw any form of dependency as being dangerous and unhealthy. It didn’t matter if it was healthy or not, I regarded dependency as the same irrespective of who else was involved or how trustworthy they were. I doubted my ability to tell the difference as well. Basically, I did not know how or who to trust. I had never learned that lesson. I made my way entirely on my own.
Of course, if one doesn’t trust, one cannot sustain intimate relationships. That is an absolute fact. I’ve written all about the importance of trust here. I know it to be important too. There is a big difference between knowing and knowing how to do it. This is giving me a real shaking up this morning. I’m going to stop writing now for a while as tears are rolling down my face and steaming up my reading glasses. I can’t see what I’m typing anymore.
Back! I wrote somewhere down the page a quote from James Hillman although I believe he was quoting someone else. I don’t have the book to hand. It went, “In all trust are the seeds of betrayal”. I went on to argue that love supplanted and subsumed trust since I believed that if one trusted, one would inevitably be betrayed, but if one loved, one would not. I’ve changed my mind. I believe that love and trust go together, and neither one implies the other. In short, one needs both to sustain an intimate relationship.
There’s something of a catch 22 here. It’s this: If one is unable to trust then inevitably one builds untrustworthy relationships. I should write that out like a schoolboy writing lines.
To really get past and get over the block of mourning, one needs to be able to share the most vulnerable parts of oneself with others. It is only this act of trust that can transform one’s fear of being hurt and betrayed. To get through this stage, means that one has to allow oneself to experience healthy dependency. I’m not sure if I have ever done that in my life. Even when I almost died last year, I resolved to nurse myself back to health independently. I made it too, but at what cost? I wonder now. The word “dependency” still sticks in my throat even now. To heal properly, one needs to feel the care of others. Not only does one need to be able to accept that care, but one needs the caring of others in order to heal.
I hope I can find my way to trust now. I feel an awful empty space inside.
In my next posts I will share more of what I believe the process of healing from child abuse entails. These are my new life’s lessons. My reservations about trust are profound. In doing what I’m doing now, someone close to me will tell me soon that I’m wasting my time here self-indulgently. I doubt that I will trust them, nor will I allow them to care for me. Also, and here's the rub, I doubt if they trust me either.