I have had to learn a lot after coming to terms with child sex abuse and date rape at age 42. Actually it tool me another three years before I realized just how much I was harmed by abuse. I went back to my journal and read what I wrote the day after I was raped. I had reread many pages in my diary, but not that one, and it was a shocker. I wrote about how dirty I felt afterwards. My words were filled with pain and anger at myself, at the two young men who raped me and at all men.
I won't share more of my story right now.
Healing has been a slow process guided by a therapist and then by learning Compassionate Listening as taught by The Compassionate Listening Project and then by reading about Non-Violent Communication and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.
This is going to be an evolving blog, so check back to read more later.
These are some of the things I learned along the way.
1. The first step in healing is coming to terms with what happened. You cannot move forward until you do that.
2. Healing is always a two steps forward and one step backwards process. It's OK to move backwards now and then. That is part of the process of growing and changing.
3. Be kind and caring and gentle to yourself. Speak to yourself gently and lovingly. Remember that the power of suggestion is real. If you keep telling yourself that you are dumb and worthless and stupid, you will make your healing journey, your movement forward much more challenging.
4. Love yourself, nurture yourself, cheer yourself forward. Remember the power of suggestion is positive as well as negative. Tell yourself these thing: I am brave, I am growing stronger, I am learning, I am growing, I am getting better and better all the time, I am loving, I am compassionate, I am good, I am just, I am beautiful, I am great, I am worthwhile, I am lovable, I am worthy of respect, I am wise..... What other affirmations can you think of to tell yourself?
5. Replace being ashamed of yourself and worrying about what other people think with compassion and respect for yourself and your needs and feelings.
6. Work on nurturing respect for others and their needs and feelings as you cannot have healthy relationships with other people if you don't have respect and compassion for others as well as for yourself.
7. Healing from Abuse is like the Five Stages of grief and loss with Dying described by Elizabeth Kubler Ross: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Forgiven me for the swear words. I was watching Orange in the New Black when I wrote this.
a. I don't remember being abused OR well something like abuse happened to me but I turned out OK.
b. I am so angry at the people who abused me and the people who covered that abuse up. I can't heal if they don't apologize and aren't punished.
c. If only I talk enough and tell people how bad HE/THEY are, people will figure out who is right and who is wrong. And then I will get justice, and then I can heal.
d. I never got justice. No one cares. The world is an evil place. I am alone or I won my case and I felt good for a day or two or for a month, but I still have the same problems. People are still mean to me and do things that make me angry or hurt me. People still don't love me. Nothing but bad happens to me. LIFE IS A PIECE OF SH%T.
e. I got handed a piece of sh%t in life. There is nothing I can do to change from the past. The past is what it is.
Death is final, but abuse isn't. So we have to add one more step.
f. What am I going to do to improve my piece of sh%t life?
8. Anger is a major step of the path to healing, but it needs to be channeled in ways that help you. If you don't channel it properly, it can ruin your relationships, your job opportunities, and your life.
You can learn about some ways to calm yourself down at these blogs: Healing the Wounds of Abuse: How I Harmed Myself With My Anger and 8 Ways Housework Heals Me and Healing the Wounds of Abuse: How I Harmed Myself Through My Anger and 9 Ways Gardening Heals Me.
9. It is really hard to cope with someone shouting at you or criticizing you or blaming you. When someone does that to me I feel angry and frustrated and hurt, and I don't want to do what that person wants me to do. But know also what is true for you and me is also true for other people. If you respond to others with anger back when they mistreat you, your anger will harm you. Instead work on how to respond calmly. Journal. Make a plan for what to do. (For tips, read my blog on journaling: How to Journal to Heal from Abuse and my blogs on how to heal anger: Healing the Wounds of Abuse: How I Harmed Myself With My Anger and 8 Ways Housework Heals Me and Healing the Wounds of Abuse: How I Harmed Myself Through My Anger and 9 Ways Gardening Heals Me.
10. Drama is not a relationship skill.
11. Drama is not a job skill.
12. BE ON GUARD TO LISTEN in order to calm arguments and heal relationship problems. I have to keep on reminding myself of this because I get triggered to anger if people yell at me or accuse me or blame me or lie about me. When we respond with anger, we can harm our relationships with friends and family or lose our jobs.
13. You can heal on your own, but support along the way makes the journey easier. Don't give up easily. Be persistent. Try a support group but don't just go once. Go at least ten times before deciding it can't help you. Go to a therapist at least as many times if not weekly -- for years. Read books. Follow advice from reputable sources (ie. Therapists, books written by therapists, wounded survivor healers, domestic violence advocates) and more. Go on retreats and workshops.
14. Forgive yourself for making mistakes. Instead of berating yourself for making mistakes turn them into learning experiences. (Practical advice: Journal about what happened. Then make a plan what to do better next time journal based on Compassionate Listening, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy or Non-Violent Communication, your therapist or your support group). See also my blog about journaling: How to Journal to Heal from Abuse
15. People may irritate you by trying to tell you to forgive which feels like letting the abuser of the hook for taking responsibility for the abuse, but a better way to think of it is Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance means we make peace with the past. Radical Acceptance is a concept core to Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.
16. Radical Acceptance means I can't change the past. It happened. Things are what they are. What happened happened. What happened made me the person I am: The good and the bad. I can't change what happened, but I can work on making my future better.
17. Accept responsibility for your thoughts, feelings and actions. Act knowing you are responsible for your thoughts, feelings and actions.
18. If you are experiencing a bad moment, remember it is just this moment, this day, this week or even this month, but it is not forever. What is happening now is temporary. Sometimes more bad things will happen, but good things will also happen. The challenge is to wait out the bad times or, better yet, to make proverbial lemonade out of a lemon and actively change your life to make your world better.
19. Find a spiritual connection to help you make sense of what happened, but make sure it is one that does not blame the victim.
© 2015 Virginia Jones. You can contact Virginia at compassion500@gmail.com.
Check our my You Tube Channel at Healing is a Sacred Journey -- StopAbuse/HealWounds
I won't share more of my story right now.
Healing has been a slow process guided by a therapist and then by learning Compassionate Listening as taught by The Compassionate Listening Project and then by reading about Non-Violent Communication and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.
This is going to be an evolving blog, so check back to read more later.
These are some of the things I learned along the way.
1. The first step in healing is coming to terms with what happened. You cannot move forward until you do that.
2. Healing is always a two steps forward and one step backwards process. It's OK to move backwards now and then. That is part of the process of growing and changing.
4. Love yourself, nurture yourself, cheer yourself forward. Remember the power of suggestion is positive as well as negative. Tell yourself these thing: I am brave, I am growing stronger, I am learning, I am growing, I am getting better and better all the time, I am loving, I am compassionate, I am good, I am just, I am beautiful, I am great, I am worthwhile, I am lovable, I am worthy of respect, I am wise..... What other affirmations can you think of to tell yourself?
5. Replace being ashamed of yourself and worrying about what other people think with compassion and respect for yourself and your needs and feelings.
6. Work on nurturing respect for others and their needs and feelings as you cannot have healthy relationships with other people if you don't have respect and compassion for others as well as for yourself.
7. Healing from Abuse is like the Five Stages of grief and loss with Dying described by Elizabeth Kubler Ross: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Forgiven me for the swear words. I was watching Orange in the New Black when I wrote this.
a. I don't remember being abused OR well something like abuse happened to me but I turned out OK.
b. I am so angry at the people who abused me and the people who covered that abuse up. I can't heal if they don't apologize and aren't punished.
c. If only I talk enough and tell people how bad HE/THEY are, people will figure out who is right and who is wrong. And then I will get justice, and then I can heal.
d. I never got justice. No one cares. The world is an evil place. I am alone or I won my case and I felt good for a day or two or for a month, but I still have the same problems. People are still mean to me and do things that make me angry or hurt me. People still don't love me. Nothing but bad happens to me. LIFE IS A PIECE OF SH%T.
e. I got handed a piece of sh%t in life. There is nothing I can do to change from the past. The past is what it is.
Death is final, but abuse isn't. So we have to add one more step.
f. What am I going to do to improve my piece of sh%t life?
8. Anger is a major step of the path to healing, but it needs to be channeled in ways that help you. If you don't channel it properly, it can ruin your relationships, your job opportunities, and your life.
You can learn about some ways to calm yourself down at these blogs: Healing the Wounds of Abuse: How I Harmed Myself With My Anger and 8 Ways Housework Heals Me and Healing the Wounds of Abuse: How I Harmed Myself Through My Anger and 9 Ways Gardening Heals Me.
9. It is really hard to cope with someone shouting at you or criticizing you or blaming you. When someone does that to me I feel angry and frustrated and hurt, and I don't want to do what that person wants me to do. But know also what is true for you and me is also true for other people. If you respond to others with anger back when they mistreat you, your anger will harm you. Instead work on how to respond calmly. Journal. Make a plan for what to do. (For tips, read my blog on journaling: How to Journal to Heal from Abuse and my blogs on how to heal anger: Healing the Wounds of Abuse: How I Harmed Myself With My Anger and 8 Ways Housework Heals Me and Healing the Wounds of Abuse: How I Harmed Myself Through My Anger and 9 Ways Gardening Heals Me.
10. Drama is not a relationship skill.
11. Drama is not a job skill.
12. BE ON GUARD TO LISTEN in order to calm arguments and heal relationship problems. I have to keep on reminding myself of this because I get triggered to anger if people yell at me or accuse me or blame me or lie about me. When we respond with anger, we can harm our relationships with friends and family or lose our jobs.
13. You can heal on your own, but support along the way makes the journey easier. Don't give up easily. Be persistent. Try a support group but don't just go once. Go at least ten times before deciding it can't help you. Go to a therapist at least as many times if not weekly -- for years. Read books. Follow advice from reputable sources (ie. Therapists, books written by therapists, wounded survivor healers, domestic violence advocates) and more. Go on retreats and workshops.
14. Forgive yourself for making mistakes. Instead of berating yourself for making mistakes turn them into learning experiences. (Practical advice: Journal about what happened. Then make a plan what to do better next time journal based on Compassionate Listening, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy or Non-Violent Communication, your therapist or your support group). See also my blog about journaling: How to Journal to Heal from Abuse
15. People may irritate you by trying to tell you to forgive which feels like letting the abuser of the hook for taking responsibility for the abuse, but a better way to think of it is Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance means we make peace with the past. Radical Acceptance is a concept core to Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.
16. Radical Acceptance means I can't change the past. It happened. Things are what they are. What happened happened. What happened made me the person I am: The good and the bad. I can't change what happened, but I can work on making my future better.
17. Accept responsibility for your thoughts, feelings and actions. Act knowing you are responsible for your thoughts, feelings and actions.
18. If you are experiencing a bad moment, remember it is just this moment, this day, this week or even this month, but it is not forever. What is happening now is temporary. Sometimes more bad things will happen, but good things will also happen. The challenge is to wait out the bad times or, better yet, to make proverbial lemonade out of a lemon and actively change your life to make your world better.
19. Find a spiritual connection to help you make sense of what happened, but make sure it is one that does not blame the victim.
© 2015 Virginia Jones. You can contact Virginia at compassion500@gmail.com.
Check our my You Tube Channel at Healing is a Sacred Journey -- StopAbuse/HealWounds
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