Stage One: Remembering ~ Step Two: I Have Determined That I Was Abused

Step Two ~  I have determined that I was physically, sexually or emotionally abused as a child.

This step asks you to determine and then acknowledge to yourself that you were abused as a child and that the effects of the abuse may be causing some of your difficulties as an adult. Many of us who are in the process of recalling memories of our past may not yet have objective evidence of the abuse, and we may never find outside validation or corroboration of what happened. Instead, our evidence may be more intuitive. Even in the absence of "hard evidence," these intuitive feelings are significant and should not be dismissed. Many abuse survivors were either too traumatized or psychologically incapable of organizing memories into words and images that can be recollected years later. If this is where you are in your recovery now, continue to work this step to clarify the kind of abuse you suffered. If you need to, refer to the section on "False Memories, Real Memories," in Chapter One.

An important sub-goal in this step is learning to accept your feelings about the abuse, whatever they may be at this time. These feelings may not make complete sense to you, but they are there for a reason. In the same way that the pain from a bruise tells you of a physical injury, the feelings associated with your abuse signal an internal emotional bruise. Instead of ignoring the feelings, you should try to figure out what those feelings are telling you. As a survivor, you probably had your feelings invalidated by your parents or abusers, so not recognizing your feelings as valid now may be an old pattern you want to break. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt when it comes to verifying your feelings. You will need time and help to sort out what happened, free of the denial and distortion of the past.

You can find the Self Help exercises for this Step in the Survivor to Thriver Manual.  Please remember when working on these exercises that you should have a good support system in place including a therapist, support group, crisis hotline numbers, and perhaps a trusted friend.  If you become overwhelmed by your feelings and thoughts when doing the exercises, please put them aside for a time and utilize your self-soothing activity list and safety plan if needed.

As I have said before, YOU are in charge of your healing process.  You need not hurry through it for someone else's benefit.  You control how long it takes you to work through each step and how ever long it may take for you to feel you have completed the step is the exact right amount of time.  This journey belongs to you.

Learning Self Comforting Techniques

Once I stepped on to the healing path, it was important for me to learn how to soothe myself. Self comforting is learned when we are children through healthy bonding relationships with our caregivers. Examples of healthy bonding behaviors include cuddling, holding, mutual gazing with love and adoration, and protection from abusive or violent experiences. These are things caregivers do when a child is upset. As an abuse survivor, we have been groomed by our abusers to not trust ourselves or those around us who love us. We may have been told that our parents will hate us if we tell. This leads to a lack of trust and a distancing of our childhood selves from those we thought should protect us. This interruption in healthy bonding with our caregivers leads us to not understand how to comfort ourselves. It may also be that if our parents or caregivers were abused, they don’t understand how to soothe themselves which leads to not being able to help their child comfort themselves.

When we grow into adults without the ability to comfort ourselves, we tend to try to fill that empty space that should have been filled with our comforting skills with other things. We tend to run toward tension-reducing behaviors such as smoking, drinking, drug abuse, self-harm, compulsive gambling, overeating, purging, self-starvation, and sexually risky behavior. Once you begin your journey to recovery, you will experience a wide range of thoughts and emotions. Some of these things may send you into a panic attack or make you feel out of control. For these reasons, it is very important for you to develop your self-comforting abilities. At the beginning, it is a good idea to have a list of self-soothing activities written down and available to you. In this way, when you begin to experience anxiety and tension in your journey, you can look at your list and find something to help take you out of the anxiety and refocus on the present. For more on self comforting, please see the Survivor to Thriver Manual, pg. 32.

Each survivor is unique as is their journey to healing. Please take the time to find the self comforting techniques that work for you. If you are finding that you are having a difficult time with self soothing, please reach out to a person on your support list. If you do not feel that you can do that, please contact your therapist or an emergency hotline in your area. The Resources page on this blog lists some local Pennsylvania resources as well as some national resources. Please know that you are not alone. There are many survivors out there. The journey may be bumpy now, but you are making progress. You can do this! I believe in you!

Renewing Self Trust

Self trust is something we learn pretty early to not rely on.  Children are more open to seeing spirits, yet these things are explained away by parents or care givers who can't see them or don't believe in them.  So as a child, you learn to not trust what you see.  Similarly, a child who is in an abusive situation be it mentally, emotionally, physically or sexually, is taught that their innate sense of self worth is not important.  Abusers tear down the self trust and self worth of their victims whereby they are taught to not trust what they think or feel to serve the abuser's agenda. They also employ fear tactics to keep their abuse secret.

As an adult, who has learned to not trust their own instincts and intuition, many of us find it very difficult to navigate life.  We may find we make many "incorrect" decisions, then in the pattern of our abuse, we blame ourselves and beat ourselves up.  Sometimes, we don't even understand that we are perpetuating these patterns until someone else points them out to us.  I was in that pattern until the man who would be my husband pointed them out to me.  It was a terrifying realization to come to, that I had no idea I was repeating these patterns, let alone figuring out how to go about healing that part of me.

By the grace of God, I found a therapist who was safe and helped me regain my self trust and the belief that I "could" heal.  However, during one of our first sessions, he said to me, "the best way to find a good, reputable therapist is not by picking a name out of a phone book," which is precisely what I did.  Yet on some level, I trusted that I would find what I needed.

At one point during my healing process, I was advised to try out support groups because some survivors find them a helpful tool.  This time, I researched the support groups in my area and settled on one to give a try.  My first and only meeting did not go well.  I felt attacked and judged and the mediator did nothing.  I did not try any other support groups since I did not have confidence that I could find one that I would fit into.  One key for me was actually listening to myself about not going back.  I did have an internal battle about intellectually being told that it would help, but on my gut, intuitive, self trust level, I knew it wasn't for me.  That was my first step in trusting myself again.  Taking the time to actually listen to myself and allow myself to trust that the churning feeling I got every time I thought about going back to that support group meant that I shouldn't go.  

As each survivor knows, healing is not an easy process.  Sometimes, it's down right scary.  One of the most important things you can do for yourself, no matter where you are in your process, is to begin to trust your inner voice.  Your gut feelings will never lead you astray.  In the beginning, you may experience some conflict between what you have been told and what your gut tells you.  It is important that you discern whether your thoughts are echos of things you have been told in the past, especially when they conflict with what your gut feelings are telling you.

This article gives some practical advice on how to develop self trust 3 Ways to Develop Self Trust.