Pain Caused By Regrets And Self-Doubts - Judging Ourselves

Please go and read the article "Memories and Regrets" from Beyond Survivor - The Wounded Warrior Blog written by my friend Jan L. Frayne at the following link:

http://whatislove-2010.blogspot.com/2015/08/memories-and-regrets.html

Come back here afterwards to read my thoughts about this post.

The Wounded Warrior expresses the pain and self-doubts that many survivors carry inside, hidden from the world most of the time. Voicing the pain of surviving through writing whether it is a blog like Beyond Survivor - The Wounded Warrior Blog or like here at Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker is important because giving voice to our pain frees other survivors to do the same.

Some survivors, like me, were alone with the abuser. Other survivors saw other children nearby also being abused. 

For years, I hoped and prayed that I was the only one that my dad was sexually abusing. Years later when I found out that he was abusing my sister by fondling and making sexual comments to, I was angry and felt guilty that I didn't protect her from him. I was the older sister. I loved my sister and I wanted her to be safe. She wasn't.

I can understand why Jan Frayne took on the blame for the abuse of the little boy that he saw being strangled. I, too, have said to myself, what if I had told?  Maybe my sister would have been saved from her experiences.

Looking back makes taking on the blame so easy for a survivor. We are looking back from a position of power as an adult. We didn't have that hindsight as a child.

As children, we didn't have any power. We couldn't protect ourselves or another child. No child should go through the abuse that we did. Yes, we were victims.

 I didn't have the courage to speak up as a child or even as a young adult. I wasn't able to overcome all of my fears in order to speak up. I could blame myself for my sister being abused or I can put the blame where it belongs, with my abusers. 

If we cannot prevent our own abuse from happening, how can we possibly save another child? We are not responsible for what our abusers did. That is just another form of victim blaming, even if it is ourselves we are blaming. Others do it to us often enough without us buying into it too. Stop victim blaming. 

Shift from feeling like a victim to offering love and comfort to your inner child. Feel what you feel and then let it go. You don't have to stay stuck in victim mode. Give your inner child more reasons to trust you. "Beyond" survivor doesn't mean you will never have to revisit being a survivor or a victim. Healing means going back and forth between the three as needed to heal. 

Memories come up because you are strong enough to face them. Dreams are all of the stuff that you are afraid to face in the waking world. Healing can take place in your dreams too. Keeping a dream journal can help you to figure out what your dreams are telling you. Memories and dreams are both part of healing.

Forgive yourself for what you couldn't control. Stop blaming yourself. Blaming yourself keeps you stuck in the hurt. You deserve better. 

Jan, be gentle with yourself as I have seen you be with other survivors. Beyond surviving - thriving - comes slowly but it does come. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward. Allow your friends to support you when you need us. You don't have to be strong alone. 

I copied a statement from one of my favorite teachers today that I want to share with you here.

"With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself, or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow, or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose."
                                         -Dr. Wayne Dyer
Patricia

Healing Is About Love And Compassion

Just because I disagree with someone does not make them my enemy or me theirs, at least not in my mind.  Compassion gives me the ability to look beyond the disagreement to see what issues may be bringing up stuff for the other person. 

Self-compassion also gives me the ability to look and see if I have any issues being brought up by the disagreement. Through compassion, I can see the possible hurts on both sides.  I can choose to forgive myself and the other person and let go of my own hurts and anger, if I have any.  If I hold on to my anger and resentments, they only hurt me.  They don't hurt the other person.  Only their own hurts and resentments can do that to them.  Compassion allows me to send prayers and love to the other person, as I pray for and love myself. 

Healing is about love, first of myself and then of others.  If I try to love others from a place of hurt and anger, it doesn't work.  For me to love others, I have to come from a place of self-love.  Where love exists, hurt and anger can't stay.

Part of self-love is not hurting myself for any reason. I don't own this self-love 100% of the time.  I still sometimes put the needs of others above my own and I still, when really hurting from an issue, overeat.  Right now I am overeating or grazing as my doctor called it because the idea of writing my memoir is scaring my inner children terribly.  The idea of being that vulnerable and putting the secret of incest into book form is terrifying to them.  Because of that fear, I still haven't written the first word even though I have told several people that I would.

Another equally important part of self-love is not allowing others to purposefully hurt me.  Sometimes that means removing myself from that person's presence. 

With today's access to Facebook, Twitter and emails, sometimes removing myself from that person's presence means blocking them from access to me on the internet.  Many more people have access to me on the internet than those that I know personally in my own town.  Some disagreements can be easily settled and friendships remain in tact.  Others turn abusive and those are the ones that I won't stay in.  That doesn't mean that I am judging the other person.  There is a difference between judgment and discernment.  That doesn't mean that I think the other person is mean or crazy.  I just don't have to allow their issues to be transferred on to me and be used to abuse me with. 

Until I forgive a person, that person is still controlling me.  Forgiveness means working my way through any hurt and anger that I hold towards that person. Forgiveness does not mean putting myself back in contact with that person until they have forgiven me and settled their own issues. It does not mean accepting that person back into my life when they are still raging at injustices, imagined and real, that they believe that I have done to them.  Something else I have learned is, if my heart skips a beat every time that I run into this person online, I still have a connection to this person. I still have a fear of being hurt by this person.  I need to pay attention to this fear and work through it for my own well being.

If you are still raging and still blaming, you haven't reached the forgiveness stage.  Forgiveness doesn't blame.  Responsibility and blaming are not the same thing.  Blaming carries shame.  Responsibility does not.  Responsibility is a two way street.  I am responsible for my behavior and you are responsible for yours. Blaming can keep you stuck in anger and hurt.  Responsibility gives you the tools to work through your feelings and gives you the ability to take back your personal power from the abusers. Personal power gives you choices you might not have known that you had when you were stuck being a victim.
Patricia 

Related Posts:

Judgments - Discernments or Prejudice?
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/04/judgments-discernment-or-prejudice.html

Tools Of The Ego
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/04/tools-of-ego.html

Dialogues With Dignity: Progress Over Perfection
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/08/dialogues-with-dignity-progress-over.html

You Deserve Your Own Love Guest Post
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/09/you-deserve-your-own-love-guest-post.html

Healing From Abuse Means Doing The Work of Healing

Healing from abuse means doing the work of healing, not just talking about the abuse.  Yes, in the beginning of healing, talking about what happened to you is important.  In fact, talking, in itself, is very healing and breaks the bonds of silence that your abusers taught you.  At what point in the journey, do some survivors get stuck in the drama of telling their stories and never move beyond that point?  How do you tell when you are healing from telling your story and when you are just plain stuck?

For me, I told my story over and over for about 10 years but that wasn't all that I was doing.  I was reading books on healing from incest.  I was writing about my own experiences.  I talked to other survivors who were doing their own work.  I went to two different groups for counseling as well as doing individual work with two counselors over that ten year period.  I also had two 12-Step sponsors that gave me personal work to do on healing from incest. 

I did the work of recognizing the lies that my abusers told me. Darlene Ouimet, the owner of Emerging From Broken blog, does the best job of anyone that I know of exposing the lies that many survivors grew up hearing from their abusers.  I will give you a link to Emerging From Broken at the end of this article. 

For many survivors, those abusers were one or both of their parents.  Exposing the lies of your abusers is a very important part of your early recovery.  So is telling your story. Both are healing steps that need to be taken. 

Telling your story does not mean creating drama for yourselves or others.  Some suvivors create drama as a way of recreating what they are used to as children.  This is where exposing the lies of your abusers is so important.  When you see those beliefs as lies, you can begin to choose how you will react to your triggers, how you will react to the people that, on purpose or accidentally, set off those triggers in you. 

I believe that triggers happen to show you where you still need to work on yourselves and the issues behind the triggers.  Triggers don't happen to make you blow up all over someone else.  When you do that, then you become like your abusers and abuse someone else. That is what was done to you as children and it is what you continue to do to others until you learn that you don't have to continue those unhealthy patterns of behavior. 

A pattern happens when you repeat the same behavior over and over.  I have learned to look for patterns in my own behavior.  With awareness of patterns, I can then decide to make changes or stay the same.  If my behavior is hurting me or others, I decide to change.  That in itself is a process that takes time with lots of trial and error and apologies along the way until I change that pattern with a new, healthier pattern.

One example that comes from my own life has to do with anger and rage.  Rage is unheathy anger that grows and grows and gets blow all out of proportion usually because the first signs of anger were ignored, denied or stuffed deep inside.  Rage eventually comes out when the pressure is too great to hold it in any longer.  It comes out, usually on someone that totally doesn't deserve it.  I used to do this all the time.  Anger wasn't allowed in my house except for the rage that my dad carried around so my anger was denied and stuffed with food until the rage came rolling out like hot magma from an out of control volcano damaging everything in its path.

Rage was the first feeling that I learned to deal with because it was so volatile that I could easily see the damage that I was doing with it.  Doing this work isn't a matter of feeling shame for the fact that I couldn't control my rage.  Doing this work is a matter of feeling the feelings without allowing them to hurt myself or someone else. 

Rather than feeling shame when I get a new awareness, I forgive myself for not seeing the pattern sooner, then I set out to change the situation so that I don't continue to hurt myself or someone else.  It isn't enough to feel bad about my behavior.  If I am being hurt or someone else is, then I need to change that behavior.  If I say I am sorry but continue to do the same destructive pattern, then I am not really sorry.  Any behavior that I continue to do, I am getting something out of it or I would quit.  Feeling shame or guilt about a behavior is a sign that change needs to happen.  If I know that my reactions are out of proportion to the situation, it is my responsibility to do something to change my reaction.  If I am looking to create drama, I will find an excuse to do it. 

With healing comes responsibility for my own actions and reactions.  Another person does not trigger me.  My own issues are what trigger me, not what someone else said or did.  Those issues trigger me because I haven't healed that particular issue. It is not anyone else's responsibility to fix me, just as it is not my responsibility to fix anyone else.  The triggers will keep coming until I am healed in that area.  I am not saying that I am at fault or wrong or bad because I am still being triggered.  I am saying that it is my responsibility to heal me so that I am not triggered.  It is my responsibility to do my own work to heal.  If I am refusing to see the awareness that has come into my life because of my triggers then I am still playing victim.  I am still believing my abusers' lies that say that I am not capable of taking care of myself. Or I am still believing the lie that says I am too stupid and that I am worthless and have no value and can't make decisions for my own self. No matter what you said about me or to me, I alone am responsible for what I do with that information.  You do not make me angry.  I choose whether to get angry or not.  My actions are my responsibility.  How I respond to a person or a situation is my responsibility, not yours.  I can't blame you for what I am feeling.  I choose whether I stay stuck in the victim role or I move forward in the survivor role. 

Saying that I never meant to hurt someone doesn't mean a thing if I continue to hurt them.  Feelings are not inappropriate. It is what we do with them that can be inappropriate.  I have no way of knowing what another person is feeling unless they tell me.  What I may see as insensitivity or lack of empathy in another person may not be that at all.  I cannot know or guess what another person is feeling.  What that person may say has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them.  I cannot second guess other people unless I am intent on creating drama for myself.  If I want to create drama, drama will find me. When I say someone else is insensitive, I am projecting my own insensitivity onto that person.

I want to heal from incest.  I do not want to be defined by incest.  Incest happened to me but is not who I am.  I am a human being living and growing through my experiences.  Sharing my experiences does not make me better than you or perfect.  I am far from being perfect. I make mistakes. I still sometimes see someone else hurting and out of my feelings of compassion I want to make their way easier.  Sometimes I can help. Sometimes I cannot.  Sometimes I even manage to make situations worse.  Sometimes I play devil's advocate and try to look at the bigger picture.  I don't know where the term "devil's advocate" came from. I don't see it as bad.  I see it as the simple process of stepping back and looking at more than the immediate view or seeing a different view than everyone else is taking.  Being different is not a bad thing.

To use something that I heard earlier today on an interview between Michelle Rosenthal and Susan Kingsley-Smith on the Blog Talk Radio station called Heal My PTSD, you hold the power of your own healing.  You have to do the work if you want to heal.  My question for you is, "Do you want to heal?" or  "Do you want to stay stuck in victim mode and blame everybody else for your life?"  If you want to heal, at some point, you have to move beyond the blaming stage of healing.  In order to heal, at some point in your life, you have to take responsibility for your present and future.  Responsibility for the abuse of your childhood belongs with your abuser. Responsibility for what you do with your adult life belongs with you.
Patricia

Related Links:

Emerging From Broken blog
@ http://emergingfrombroken.com/

Heal My PTSD interview on "Why Don't Survivors Want To Do the Work to Heal PTSD?"
@ http://www.blogtalkradio.com/heal-my-ptsd/2010/02/26/why-dont-survivors-want-to-heal-ptsd

Normal vs. Healthy

Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers who may be reading this.  My mother-in-law is the only mother that I have left and she is a blessing to me.  She sent me a note in the mail this week that I really love.  I know that she loves me but she doesn't say it very often.  She ended her note with the following:

"I love you a whole lot, just want you to know.  Mother Lindsay" 

That one little line from her has brightened my week.  I really do appreciate that God blessed me with the mother-in-law that he did.


Normal for me was the overreacting or underreacting to all of the stress and trauma and drama in my life that I caused and others caused.  Normal is not admitting that I am stressed or in pain.  Normal is being afraid and not knowing it.  Normal lives in denial of what really is.

Normal is what we know as children and adults living with abuse.  I don't want to be normal any more.  Normal is living in the patterns of the past and passing them on to my children.

Normal isn't good or even sane sometimes.  Normal is shouting at your children because your parents shouted at you.  Normal is wanting to do better but not being able to because you don't know how to do better.

Healthy is what I strive to be today.  Healthy gives me the ability to no longer be abused or to even attract abusers into my life.  Healthy shows me how to make better choices so that I don't pass the abuse on to my grandchildren.

Healthy means I have self-respect, self-worth, and even self-love.  Healthy means I can nurture and take care of my needs.  Healthy means I know and love who I am at all times. 

The sometimes painful part of healthy means that I can feel all of my emotions, work my way through them and release them, most of the time.  Sometimes, I still find myself numbing out when I feel overwhelmed by the intensity of whatever I am working on. 

Healthy means I do what is best for me.  I don't put everyone else's needs and priorities before my own.  An empty vessel is no good to anyone.

Healthy means I give you back responsibility for your own life rather than trying to control and fix you.  Healthy means I face and take on responsibility for the only life that I can change - mine. 

The above words started out as a comment on the Facebook Fan Page for Empowering Solutions which is written by my friend Susan Kingsley-Smith.

Your Parents Did The Best They Could

When I first heard someone say that my parents did the best they could in raising me, I would automatically, in my mind, say, "No, they didn't!"  I would feel so angry at my parents and at the person who said that statement.  I was usually in a 12-Step meeting when someone said it.  I just knew that they were wrong.  My parents did not do the best that they could.  They abused me physically, emotionally and sexually.  How could that be the best that they could do?

Then people started saying, "Your parents did the best they could with the tools that they had."  Well, wherever they got the tools, they were pretty poor tools.  That calmed my angry a little bit but not much.  It still didn't feel right to me but since I was just beginning to feel, I wasn't sure why it didn't feel right.

Then one day a friend said, "Your parents did the best they could with the tools they had and it wasn't good enough."  Finally someone else was saying what I was thinking.  I could wholeheartedly agree with that statement even after I had worked through a ton of anger.

This week I was reading from the Dennis Wholey book Becoming Your Own Parent, The Solution for Adult Children of Alcoholic and Other Dysfunctional Families.  On page 237-238, Robert Subby, M. A. talks about this very subject.

Robert Subby says, " 'Well, Mom and Dad did the best they could at the time they did it with the skills and tools they had.' "
"That's all well and good, and who's going to argue with that logic, except that it invalidates all the facts about things they didn't do right.  'With that kind of thinking,' I tell them, 'you don't have any right to feel sad or angry because 'they did the best they could.' That way you end up minimizing your own reality and invalidating yourself.  What I want to hear from you is what you feel and that what happened to you back there really happened.  I want to hear you say that you have a right to those feelings and that those mistakes were not your fault.  Don't sit here and pay me good money and defend your mom and dad.  They don't need you to defend them.' 'But I feel guilty,' the adult child says.  And I tell that adult child, 'That's an issue you're going to have to accept.  Some part of you makes you feel guilty for having real feelings, and that's not Mom and Dad anymore---that's you.' "

Thank you Mr. Subby for saying it so well.  He says we have a right to feel angry, sad and hurt.  Those feelings validate the reality that we lived through as children.  He goes on to teach another valuable lesson when he says, " 'Now enough about them [your parents].  Who's been responsible for your life since you were twenty?' Ultimately, for adult children, that's the bigger issue."
"You must come to embrace personal responsibility.  As adults, you have rejected yourself.  You have abandoned yourself.  Given your history, it's understandable why.  That's what you were trained to do.  That's what feels comfortable."

True recovery starts when you realize what you are responsible for in your adult life and you forgive yourself for all of those times that you abused yourself by rejection, abandonment and disconnection from feelings or body.  You did the best you could with the tools you had and it wasn't good enough.  You deserve better.  You can't change the past but you can choose a better future.  Is it time to forgive yourself?
Patricia

What Am I Responsible For?

Courage to Change, One Day at a Time in Al-Anon II, Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., New York, NY, 1992, page 85, March 25:

"I came to Al-Anon confused about what was and was not my responsibility.  Today, after lots of Step work, I believe I am responsible for the following:  to be loyal to my values; to please myself first; to keep an open mind; to detach with love; to rid myself of anger and resentment; to express my ideas and feelings instead of stuffing them; to attend Al-Anon meetings and keep in touch with friends in the fellowship; to be realistic in my expectations; to make healthy choices; and to be grateful for my blessings.

. . . . . . . . . .

I am not responsible for my alcoholic loved one's drinking, sobriety, job, cleanliness, diet, dental hygiene, or other choices.  It is my responsibility to treat this person with courtesy, gentleness, and love.  In this way we both can grow.

Today's reminder
Today, if I am tempted to interfere with something that is none of my business, I can turn my attention instead to some way in which I can take care of myself.

'I have a primary responsibility to myself:  to make myself into the best person I can possibly be.  Then, and only then, will I have something worthwhile to share.'
Living With Sobriety"

Last night's Al-Anon meeting was on Guilt and Taking Care of Ourselves.  I was one of the last people given a chance to talk and I passed because everything had already been said and I didn't have anything new to add to the conversation.  I was thumbing through one of my Al-Anon books and found the above reading that I am sharing with you today.  Here are some of my thoughts on my own experiences with blaming, responsibility and taking care of myself.

As an incest survivor and an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, I learned blaming at an early age.  Both parents taught it to me.  When I came into Al-Anon back in April 1989, I blamed myself for just about everything that could go wrong in my life and in yours.  I read somewhere that an abused child accepts blame for their own abuse because it makes them feel that there is something in their world that they can control.  That feels right to me.  I felt so helpless in my childhood that I needed to feel in control of something, even if it was just blaming myself for the abuse.  A young child needs their parents to survive.  You don't want to admit that the person who is in control of your very survival is abusing you.  You need that person in order for you to survive.  You need to be able to trust that person so you blame yourself.  You tell yourself that the abuse is your fault.  You must be at fault therefore, you learn to blame yourself for being molested or for being beaten or for being tortured.  You need the parent that you love so much to be faultless, after all, they are God in your small world.  They can't be wrong.  They have all the power.  Your survival depends upon them.

When I came into Al-Anon, I learned that I wasn't to blame for the incest.  He was the adult.  I was just a child doing what my parent said.  I wasn't to blame.  I was not in control.  This was not my responsibility.  I learned to forgive myself for carrying that blame around for so long.  I learned to take care of myself.

In learning to let go of what was not my responsibility, I started to heal.  I learned that I had needs and wants that were okay to have.  I learned to meet my own needs instead of expecting or hoping that others would do it for me.  I learned that I was responsible for my own happiness, not my husband or my children.  I learned to feel rather than stuff my emotions.  I learned that it was okay to be angry, hurt, sad, lonely, disgusted.  I learned that my rage wouldn't hurt anyone else and it wouldn't hurt me once I quit stuffing it.  I learned that some of my headaches were my own resistance to what is.  I learned that I couldn't change my past but I could change my reaction to that past.  I learned that what I am not responsible for isn't my business.  I learned that I wasn't responsible for fixing you or the world.  I learned that what you do or don't do isn't a reflection of me, it is a reflection of you.  I learned that what you think about me is none of my business.  I learned to respect you and your journey as well as to respect myself and my journey.  I learned that my expectations offer set me up for holding resentments against you.  You are not my judge and I am not yours.  I learned that I often judge myself more harshly than anyone else ever could.  I don't have to be perfect and neither do you.

Now, do you see why I still go to Al-Anon meetings.  I continue to learn more about myself in each meeting that I go to.  I realize just how crazy I once was and how far I have come from being that person.  Thank you, God and thank you, Al-Anon.
Patricia

Related Articles:
Blame Keeps You Stuck---Incest May Be A Part Of My Life Series---Part 7
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/01/blame-keeps-you-stuck-incest-may-be.html

Blame And Resentment Are Toxic Emotions
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/06/blame-and-resentment-are-toxic-emotions.html

Growing Up With Alcoholism In The Family
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/09/growing-up-with-alcoholism-in-family.html

What Does Forgiveness Mean To Me?
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-does-forgiveness-mean-to-me.html