Five Steps to Healing

 Both my ex-husband and I suffered trauma in our childhood. Mine is discussed elsewhere in this blog. Look for it. My ex-husband’s parents never married and were unprepared to be parents when he was born. Growing up, he was shuffled between different family members’ homes. Some family members were loving and supportive. Some were stressed by their lives. They tried to give him a good life but also failed to give him all the love and support he needed.

Perhaps due to his insecure childhood, my ex-husband was the most jealous man I had ever dated. In addition, I was eight years older than him and had worked about four years as an observer on foreign fishing vessels in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. The job came with lots of male friends and significant growth in my self-confidence. 

Before we married, my husband and I went to couples’ counseling to work on our struggles. The therapist told my soon-to-be husband to be less jealous and gave us a book by Harville Hendrix about keeping love alive in marriage. We used some of the ideas in the book, and they helped, but my soon-to-be husband’s jealousy did not stop just because a therapist told him to stop it.

We married, had two children, and then divorced.

Looking back, I wish that I had made successfully resolving our issues, including my ex-husband’s jealousy, in therapy a condition of marriage.  At the time, we had low-quality health insurance, and paying for therapy was completely extra. On the other hand, a failed marriage is much more expensive emotionally and financially than a successful one.

Over the years, I’ve worked to heal my own wounds and supported other survivors of abuse. Many survivors struggle with relationship issues, poor self-esteem, and depression. I view therapy as a vital component of healing. If you are a survivor like me, who struggles with trusting other people, you may need to work with a therapist first before you can begin to learn better coping skills. However, among the survivors I have known, some are so unable to trust other people that they have trouble working with a therapist. They resist the gentle advice a therapist offers. 

And while therapists can help with many issues, we need more than therapy to move forward to healing.

1. Skills other than therapy help the healing process. I found learning skills such as Nonviolent Communication and Dialectical Behavior Therapy to be very helpful.
2. Truth is important, but it can take a long time for a survivor to be able to tell the truth. I’ve met people who stayed mired in abusive relationships, struggling with depression and low self-esteem. Moreover, they protect their abuser, or they fear them so much that they lie about what the abuser does to them to stay safe. Or they protect their fragile self-esteem by being defensive. One domestic violence advocate told me that victims may visit DV offices as many as nine times before they leave an abusive relationship.
3. Trust a therapist to help you and guide you. Ask for their help and humbly try to follow it. If you have poor rapport with a particular therapist, try working with another. However, if you keep on having difficulty with therapists, probably the problem is you. Therapists are imperfect. They make mistakes. The history of therapy has been imperfect.  Sigmund Freud, for example, initially understood the underlying cause of “hysteria” in women was chronic child sex abuse and incest. However, his peers criticized him so strongly that he backed away from this theory and pursued a less helpful direction for the rest of his life. There have been many trends in therapy, such as strict behavioralism, which have some positive aspects and some negative ones.  Overall, therapeutic techniques and understanding have continued to improve as decades have passed since Sigmund Freud's life and death. More research and experience with various therapies and therapeutic skills are needed, and more is coming. You will be helped by working with a therapist far more than you will be helped by dismissing them because they don’t do what you want. One skill a therapist can help you build is bringing up your concerns with friends and family in a strong, productive way. Truthfully, when a survivor experiences lots of challenges with therapists, I suspect this survivor is deeply wounded and really fragile, and that their journey to healing may be long and challenging
4. Tell the truth. You will experience challenges in your healing process if you cannot tell the truth to yourself and to therapeutic professionals. For example, are you a drug addict?  Do you have problems with alcohol?  Are you promiscuous?  Do you experience prolonged outbursts of anger or sadness? Do you feel you have to lie to other people to cope with your challenging circumstances? Do you hide an uncomplimentary truth to protect someone you love or to protect your relationship with them? Most people don’t want to admit to any of these things because they are not complimentary, but you may not heal if you cannot face painful truths. You may remain wounded and vulnerable to abuse. You may also be abusive toward others.
5. Ask a therapist for help talking about your experiences, feelings, and desires with other people in a diplomatic and respectful way.

I wrote this blog a decade ago. Now I don’t remember what else I was thinking at the time.