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

Forgiveness Can Be So Complicated For Incest Survivors

Forgiveness can be so complicated for incest survivors. Some ask how do you forgive someone who hurt you so bad when they were the ones who should have been protecting you from harm? How can you forgive the sense of betrayal by the person who holds the biggest place in your heart when your abuser is your parent or a sibling? How can you forgive yourself when you grew up being told, by your abusers, that the incest was your fault. If you hadn't seduced them, they wouldn't have molested you. If you had been a good little girl or good little boy, you wouldn't have deserved to be sexually abused. How do you forgive yourself when you feel only hate for yourself? 

All of those are questions that I asked myself and every survivor that I know has also asked themselves those same questions. I have also heard survivors say, "Why should I forgive those monsters that took my innocence and destroyed my childhood? Why should I forgive such evil people?" I used to believe that forgiving my abusers meant that I was saying what they did to me was okay. That is never what forgiveness says. I know some survivors who say that they will never forgive their abusers. I can understand that stand even though I chose a different way. When you pressure a survivor to forgive before they are ready, you are adding more suffering to the abuse. Please don't do that. 

For myself, I have forgiven my abusers and myself. Even if you choose to not forgive your abusers, you should forgive yourself and your inner child. You were a child. You were not at fault or to blame for the abuse. Again, you were a child.  You may ask, "What do I need to forgive myself for?" I have written a whole article about that self-forgiveness that I will post at the end of this article. One thing to forgive yourself for is believing the lies of your abuser. You didn't know they were lying and giving your their shame. You didn't know it was theirs and not yours to carry. Forgive yourself for being a child who couldn't protect yourself. Your abusers had physical and emotional power over you because you were a child. Learning to love yourself and letting go of the self-hatred are a very important step to forgiving yourself. You were a child. If you could have done things differently, you would have. You were not in control of your life. Your abusers were.

Before I could forgive my abusers, I had to figure out what I felt and who I was. For years, I turned forgiveness over to God and asked Him to deal with it until I could. I didn't wake up one morning and decided to forgive. Forgiveness was a gradual process over years of healing. Only in looking back did I realize that forgiveness had happened. Forgiveness isn't a one time decision. Each time that a new layer of issues come up, I choose to forgive again. 

For me, the choice to not forgive just means I am still holding on to some anger that I need to feel and work through before I can let go. Once I can let go of the anger, which only happens after working through my feelings, then I can forgive again. Holding on to the anger doesn't have any effect on my abusers but it can hurt me by raising my blood pressure and creating illnesses in my body and mind. When that happens, my abusers win again. I am not into letting my abusers win. They had control when I was a child. As a survivor/thriver, I am the person in control of my life and the quality of my life. 
Patricia

Related Posts:

Prelude To Forgiveness @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/09/prelude-to-forgiveness.html

Forgiveness Is For You, Not The Other Person @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/09/forgiveness-is-for-you-not-other-person.html

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

Forgiveness, Done In Layers @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/06/forgiveness-done-in-layers.html

Forgiveness, Lies And Trust @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2013/08/forgiveness-lies-and-trust.html

Journey To Your Heart - Learning To Love Yourself After Abuse @  http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2012/08/journey-to-your-heart-learning-to-love.html

Healing Is About Love And Compassion @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/10/healing-is-about-love-and-compassion.html

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

Transformation Through Writing

What transformation do you want for yourself from writing your book? This is a question from a writer's challenge class that I am taking this week. I thought I would share with you why I am writing my book The Case of The Three-Year-Old Adulteress.

I want to write my book to help others but also for my own healing and understanding of my journey through this life. I want the final transformation from survivor to thriver to happen because of my writing of The Case of The Three-Year-Old Adulteress. I want others to see that healing from incest and dysfunction is possible. I know that if I can do it, then others can too. I am not the only one. I also want all survivors to know that they are not alone with their pain and their rage. The pain and the rage can be felt and healed. You won't die from the pain. You won't kill someone else, as my inner child always was afraid of, if you let out the rage. You are more likely to die from stuffing the feelings and denying them because of health issues like high blood pressure and heart disease. Feeling hurts but the act of feeling also frees you.

Transformation is change and change is healthy. Healing releases all of the hurt and makes room for love and joy. I want writing my  book to be cathartic in that I can release all negativity from my mind and my body.

Writing this book will be my victory over my abusers. They will no longer rule my life. My abusers won't control me any more. This book is breaking my silence in a major life-changing way. I win. My abusers lose.

My book will be a way to face any fears that my inner child may still carry inside. Together we will confront their lies. The Case of The Three-Year-Old Adulteress will be the ultimate act of self-love for me. This book says, "This is who I am. I am proud of me. I love and respect myself."

This is my story and I am so much more than a story of incest. I am no longer a victim of incest. I am a survivor turned thriver. I will write the ending to my story in any way that I choose. I am in control of my words, thoughts and deeds. I will listen to my inner voice and know that I can trust it because it is me, my inner wisdom, my inner Divinity. It is that spark of Spirit that has always kept me alive and moving forward, one step at a time.

The Case of The Three-Year-Old Adulteress is my story and in sharing my story, I hope to inspire others to have the courage to share their stories and to break their silence too. Together we are strong and can one day prevent other children from being molested. We will win. We will make the world a better place.

I have always known I would write my story. Telling my story is the one way that I know to take the evil that was done to me and make something good come from it. That is important to me more than anything else.
Patricia

Incest - From A Pain-filled Past To Thriving

"We cannot change a pain-filled past. What we can do is change how it affects us. The past has already been written, but we have the power to write the future based on self-support and respect. We can write a future full of strength, peace, wealth, and love. All we have to do is what is right now."     
                                                                                        ---Iyanla Vanzant

Some parts of my journey have been painful in the extreme. Sometimes the journey has been exciting, filled with tears and laughter, blessed with earth angels and friends who have guided me and given me a resting place when I got tired. My journey isn't over yet. When I get tired, I take a break and then move forward again after a brief stop. I have learned to play and to love myself and my life whatever comes into it, even the struggle which tests what I have learned and how I define myself in the present moment. I love the search for knowledge and the wisdom that comes from experience. I love myself. I love who I have become and who I will be tomorrow. I would not be the person I am today without the struggles and incest of past years and the healing path that I chose to go down.

Everyone has the ability to change what they don't like about themselves. But no one has the right or responsibility to try to change another person. You can only change yourself. Even in a relationship, the only person you can change is yourself. I have learned to focus on my part of the relationship and let my husband focus on his. The strange thing is that once you change yourself, the other person changes too or they leave. I have seen it happen over and over again. If another person's decisions affect you negatively, you can choose to stay or to leave. If you expect them to change just because you want them to, you are fooling yourself. Until they want to change, they will not, no matter how much you want them to. Relationships are mirrors for each of the partners. The mirror shows what is good and also what you want to change about yourself. What I have learned is that in my connection to you, I learn more about myself.

I see myself as moving beyond survivor to becoming a thriver. Thriver is a new word that my computer doesn't accept yet as a true word. I think survivors who are beginning to see joy and peace come back into their lives maybe for the first time have started to use the word thriver to destinquish between being a survivor which is the stage where you leave your victim role behind and you have a lot of healing still to do. Today I have love and laughter in my life and I also have peace and happiness coming into my heart and mind. Happiness doesn't depend upon my circumstances. It depends upon my attitude and how I look at my life. Today instead of struggles, I see challenges. Instead of hurt and sadness, I see opportunities for growth. I have many moments of laughter in my life and in my home. I am not so overly serious as I once was. There is light in my world, even on the darkest days. To me that is the definition of a thriver. And there is always room for more good in my world. What stage are you at in your journey?
Patricia

A Dad Issue From My Past Still Affecting Me Today

As the holidays are fast approaching, I have noticed several things from my past coming to the surface. My mom has been in two of my dreams recently. Rarely does either of my parents show up in my dreams. Two nights in a row is a sign of something but I am not sure what, other than the anniversary of her death is coming up on November 20. Maybe this will be a year that I do some more grieving. Maybe there is something that she is trying to teach me but I don't know what it is yet. I will wait to see if I get anything more from her or my dreams.

Everywhere I turn for the past few weeks, some survivor is talking about the silent screams of their abuse. I am familiar with those silent screams held inside of you as a child being physically, sexually abused by an adult. You hold the screams in because of the fear that once they start, you may not be able to stop them. You hold them in because, if your abuser can't deal with your tears, he certainly can't deal with your screams of pain and horror over being raped by a grown man when you are just a small child. You hear the screams in your head but no one else does but another survivor who has them too. I know those silent screams are still there inside of me but have no idea what to do with them other than acknowledge their existence like I am doing now.

Over the past few days, I have been part of two conversations in different groups. In both conversations, I expressed a difference of opinion to the other person's opinion. Both times, my opinion was rejected, which is their right. What is not their right or anyone else's is to say that I am still in victim mode or creating drama just because I voiced a different opinion. I got angry. In talking it out with some friends, I realized that the source of my anger was an old issue from my dad and his controlling behavior. As a child, until I left home at 19, I was not allowed to have a difference of opinion with my dad.

Expressing my opinion is important to me as an adult. I work hard to not do it in an aggressive, abusive way like my dad did with his laws that he stated in my childhood. Everything my dad said was to be accepted as law in our house. He was the dictator. I am not a child to be ruled by anyone today. I am an adult and I do often have an opinion. I respect the opinions of others and I hope they will respect mine.

I can't change or fix another person. I can try to understand them and their view point. I don't mind that others have a view point different than mine. Those differences are what make the world an interesting place to me. When another person starts name calling or treating me like I am inferior to them, then I feel as I did as a child who was not respected, not listened to and not allowed to have an opinion. Don't call me a victim or say that I am creating drama just because I express an opinion different than yours. I have learned not to strike out at a person in anger. I will regret what I say each time. I have learned that if I am angry, it is my issue, usually from the past, that I need to work on.  Usually I work on an issue by writing about it, as I am doing now. The other person's issues are not my business.

Another person's air of superiority can only affect me if I am feeling inferior. I have come to know that a superiority complex means the person is feeling inferior inside and afraid of others seeing it. I know because I used to do this with a sarcastic tongue. What we often see in others is because it is also a part of us. I have been there, done that, when I was younger so I know the fears behind the superiority and the sarcasm. Both keep others from getting too close so they can't hurt you. Today if I use sarcasm it is only in fun and never to hurt someone else.

We all have our own issues to deal with sometimes on a daily basis. Just know that your issues are yours. If someone else triggers you, it isn't their responsibility to fix it or you. It is yours. If you are angry or scared or sad because of something that was said or because of a situation you are in, look to yourself, usually your past, to find the answers. If you concentrate on the other person and what they said or what they did, you won't heal you. You will just add more woundedness to what you already have. My computer says that "woundedness" isn't a word. Well, it should be. Neither is "thriver" and again, it should be. As survivors, we are changing the world, one person at a time. We are inventing a new vocabulary to help us do it. Hope you are loving this late Sunday afternoon, my friends.
Patricia

My Story Of Incest Guest Post on Survivor Advocacy

Hi. I don't have much to say today except to express my gratitude to all of my readers. I also want to share two blog posts. One is my guest post over at Survivor Advocacy. I hope you will go to the following link and read it.  A friend who has already read the post, says the post is my very best writing that she has read so far. I am not a very good judge of my writing. I write from the heart and write with as much honesty as I can with the difficult topic of incest. Here is the link:

My Story Of Incest found at http://www.survivoradvocacy.org/2012/11/my-story-of-incest.html


The second blog post that I want to highlight here today is from my friend Patricia (Tricia) McKnight. Tricia's blog is called survivorsjustice. I absolutely love the blog post that Tricia posted earlier today. The post is called "Hopes, Dreams, Moments of Laughter, Thriving". Tricia gives the best explanation of the differences between being a victim, survivor and thriver that I have ever read. I have tried a few times to explain the differences myself. She does a much better job in today's article. Here is the link:

Hopes, Dreams, Moments of Laughter, Thriving found at http://survivorsjustice.com/2012/11/14/hopes-dreams-moments-of-laughter-thriving/

I have been reading Tricia's blog for awhile now and we are friends on Facebook and Twitter where we are both Advocates for abused children and for other survivors. Who are these survivors? What have they survived?

Many of you who are reading this blog are survivors. You know who you are. You have survived incest, other forms of child abuse, domestic violence as a child and/or as an adult. Some of you are survivors of parents mental illness, of narcissist mothers or fathers, or maybe the family disease of alcoholism and drug abuse. You name it. You have survived it. No one was willing to be an advocate for me when I was a child even though a few people suspected that something was wrong. Nobody asked. I want that to change. If you suspect child abuse in any form, ask questions. If you are wrong, you can apologize. If you are right, you have changed the life of a child who needs you.
Patricia

No Instant Fixes For Childhood Sexual Abuse

With the pain of childhood sexual abuse, no instant fixes exist, that I know of. You and your inner children are worth every bit of time and effort that it takes to heal. Just like you went from victim to survivor, you can now go from survivor to thriver and experience joy, peace and happiness in your life. These emotions take time to find as they have been buried under the pain and memories of your sexual abuse.  As you heal, they will return to your life. I know this is possible because over the past few years, I have moved from survivor to thriver.

Becoming a thriver doesn't mean that I will never again feel the pain of my childhood of abuse in the form of incest and my dad's alcholism. I do still have issues come up, sometimes suddenly and without warning. I still hurt and sometimes feel anger and sadness. The difference is that those feelings don't weigh me down and take me into depression like they once did. They visit for shorter lengths of time and the intensity isn't as strong. I recognise them as issues and work on healing and releasing them. I didn't used to recognise my own feelings for what they were. I just knew I was always tired and always carried a deep sadness within my heart and mind. Today I don't.

As a thriver, I really do love myself. Those aren't just meaningless, wishful words. They are true. I know that you can transition from survivor to thriver too. I am not the only one capable of doing this work. It is work. I don't know of any instant fixes. If the fixes were instant, the value of the whole healing experience would not be the same. Through the experince of healing, I learned to love and value myself and you can do the same. Healing from childhood sexual abuse is a process that you are worth starting and continuing with in your life. I am just one example of how this process does work. I know many more survivors that have done the work of healing.

Life is for more than just surviving. We are not meant to be victims of life and mean spirited abusers. We are meant to be thrivers. I wish for you a glorious day and many blessings. You deserve both.
Patricia