"Tough Love"

So I seem to have started, or at least added to, some drama on another blog.  I don't want to go into detail because I don't want this blog to become a place where other people are talked about.  (After all it's all about ME here!  lol :-P )  But I do want to talk about something that came up through this drama, and has been on my mind anyway.  It's something that has the potential to be offensive if taken the wrong way (especially if you are a SA survivor), so please try to approach this with an open mind.  I am also very open to comments and discussion on this because it's something that I'm trying to make sense of.

Now then...I've noticed a lot of SA survivors, and especially CSA (childhood sexual abuse) survivors tend to get stuck very deeply in the victim role.  We tend to think that no one could possibly understand the pain we're in, and that nothing could possibly be as bad as what we've experienced.  Anyone who tells us different, we say "just doesn't understand."  I know I am guilty of this.  For many many years I wallowed in self pity.  I talked about how hard my life was/is, and how everyone else had it sooooo much better.  I was constantly angry, jealous, and bitter towards everything and everyone.

Obviously CSA IS bad.  Very bad.  These are people the child is supposed to be able to trust, often their own parents, committing horrible atrocities.  They are taking away the child's very core, innocence, ability to trust, etc.  Naturally some grief is allowed.  There's also issues of PTSD.  When you're actively having flashbacks to your trauma, there's not a lot you can do in the moment to stop it...especially not at first.

For me the victim thing came for a couple reasons.  For one, it just came naturally.  I was told all my life that I was worthless, good for nothing, etc. etc.  How would I suddenly come to believe anything different?  Of course I felt broken and like I could never get better!  Then on top of that, it was survival.  Playing the victim got me what I needed, both physically and emotionally.  When I was homeless I knew how to give the perfect sob story to get the cafeteria ladies at school to give me extra food for free.  I could convince the librarian to let me sleep in the comfy chairs because it was the only place I had to rest.  It was also the only way I knew to get emotional support.  I didn't really understand a difference between support and sympathy, or sympathy and love.  Well maybe I did, but didn't think I could achieve genuine support or love.  But I knew how to get sympathy.  I don't talk about my past much in my regular life, but I had places I'd go (mostly online) where I could go on and on about poor me, I've been hurt, I don't have a family, etc. etc. and people would be all over themselves to take care of me.  Don't get me wrong, these people were awesome and amazing, and I don't know what I would've done without them.  But I'm not sure it was helpful overall in my healing.  (This is a big debatable question I'm not sure I want to get in to right now....I was on the verge of wanting to die for a looooooong time, so maybe this attention was the type that I needed, who knows).

I really didn't realize there was another option until I started going to AA.  I was going through my resentments with my sponsor and one part of that is saying what my part was in each resentment.  (i.e. I was pissed at the school for screwing up my payments, but really I should've checked in to it early on when I didn't get the right confirmation).  Now obviously I have HUGE resentments towards those that hurt me as a kid.  When I first wrote about them I said I had no part in it because I was a child.  My sponsor told me that I had no part in it then, but my part in it now is that I continue to hold on to it.  I got pissed.  What the hell is that supposed to mean?  You think I WANT to hold on to this?  You think I want to think about all these horrors and all that pain?  If it was so easy to let it go don't you think I'd be doing that?!

As I ranted, she subtly pointed out ways that I was using my past as an excuse.  One example was my getting kicked out of IOP for showing up late.  I'd said, "well if they only knew what I go through to get myself there they'd understand!"  She pointed out that probably everyone there goes through crap to get out of bed and get there, and even if they don't, who cares.  I am now an adult that gets to make my own choices, and I get to choose whether to give in to the pain or suck it up and get there on time anyway.  She pointed out that even though the flashbacks aren't in my control, that I have the power to fight against those thoughts.  I can distract myself, I can try to change them in my head and take my power back, I can stand up to them and tell myself they're in the past, etc.  Or I can give in to them because it's hard and they're scary.

It took a while to get past the anger I felt about this idea of it being my fault for holding on to the pain.  But the more I thought about it I realized it wasn't mean, it was empowering.  All the sympathy givers, wonderful as they were, had been giving the message that I couldn't really be expected to be successful, show up to places on time, form relationships, work through/overcome my trauma memories, etc. etc.  I don't think that's what they'd meant to say, and I definitely hadn't realized it's what I was hearing.  But suddenly here was this person telling me that I could be more.  She was telling me that even though it hurt like hell, I had the power to do better.  I was capable of becoming so much more than the broken blob I had defined myself as.  She told me that not only could I overcome what had happened and be a "normal," functional member of society, but that she expected me to.  She BELIEVED in me that I could.  If she hadn't believed it was possible for me, she could've just given me a little pat on the back and said, "it's ok, you're doing your best."  But she didn't do that.  Instead she said, "you're doing ok, but you could do better if you're committed and you work for it."  So I tried.  I moved past "how could you say that?" and in to "ok, I'll give it a shot."  And she has supported me all the way through, and continues to.  She does something truly amazing for me.  She supports me 100% unconditionally no matter what, which in itself is amazing.  It took some time for me to really believe her in that, but I keep expecting her to run away or start to hate me when she hears about things i've done and things that have been done to me, but she's always right there.  She listens, we talk about how sick those who hurt me are and how wrong it was, and then she asks me what I'm going to do about it.

A year ago I never believed I could heal.  I was in a place of ultimate misery.  I could make it to work, just barely.  I could manage to eat lunch (and maybe a little breakfast) at work because it was the only time I felt that horrible feeling in my stomach go away long enough to get food in.  At night I would shut myself in my room and drink til I passed out.  I believed that was all the more life I could ever have, because I believed that I couldn't handle and couldn't overcome the newly recovered memories of what had been done to me.

10 months ago I was locked in a psych ward, taken there literally kicking and screaming and tied to a stretcher because I was fully ready to die.

Today, while I can't say the past doesn't bother me, it doesn't control me either.  I struggle with the memories.  I grieve for the childhood I wish I had.  I feel huge amounts of rage towards my parents and the others for doing what they did.  But I also have fun.  I smile and enjoy myself.  I make it to work every day, I eat good meals, and i take care of what needs to be done.  When the bad comes up, I know it won't last forever, and I look for options of how to deal with it rather than curling up and saying it's too much, it's too hard, etc.

I can't even describe what an incredible change this has been!  If you had told me 10 months ago that this is where I would be now I would've laughed in your face.  Or possibly punched you.

Now the problem I'm having is when I go back to these places I used to go and I see so many people trapped in the sadness.  I see so many people saying they are bad, they can never be ok, they're worthless, etc.  I see people believing that the only positive interaction they can have is ppl feeling sorry for them, or relationships where the other person doesn't truly care for their feelings.  It breaks my heart.  I know that pain so so well and I want to help bring people out of it like my sponsor did for me.  But not everyone is ready for that.  The healing I've been through is HARD.  I had to be truly willing to give 100% and face things I swore I'd never face.  I now not everyone is ready to do that, and some people never will.  At first I told my sponsor I couldn't do it, and she said that that was ok but that it meant she couldn't work with me anymore.  She said to come back when I was ready.  That first got all my abandonment craziness stuff goin, but I managed to not drink over it and eventually found the strength to call her and talk to her about it more.  When I was ready to work, she was ready to support, because that's the way she does it.  She doesn't let me sit in self pity, and she calls me on it when I do.  And yes, it still pisses me off some times because self pity is easy.  But it wasn't helping me feel good.  It wasn't helping me get better.

So what did help?
*Making a list of what I was grateful for.  I used to say I have nothing to be grateful for but that's so not the case.  There's things like the grass and the beautiful shade trees that give me a safe, comfortable place to sit and think.  That exists no matter what's going on in my life...same with sunrises, sunsets, etc.  And the fact that I'm no longer living in the hell I grew up in.  That's something to always be grateful for.

*Noticing the world around me.  Yeah there's things in my life that suck.  There's things in lots of people's lives that suck.  Before I only noticed how things affected me.  But starting to see that maybe ppl who were mean to me on a given day were having a bad day that had nothing to do with me, and that I even had the ability to make someone's day better based on my actions.  It started to become more important to me to think about how I acted and do the right thing, rather than let my anger, frustration, sadness, etc. get the better of me.

*Finding people I can help.  I started volunteering and realized I have something to offer the world.  I also started to do little things where I could, like picking up trash or helping bring grocery carts in from the parking lot.  Little things that allowed me to make the world a bit better through positive energy, rather than taking from it with my negative.

*Learning that my emotions weren't going to kill me.  I used to panic every time I had an emotion and race to do something to stop it.  Now I'm learning that I can stop, take a deep breath, and figure out my next step.

That's what's worked for me.  It may or may not ever work for anybody else.  But it feels wrong for me now to go back to the old ways and tell someone, "It's ok, you don't have to worry about it, we understand."  (Hence the drama on the other blog).  I don't want to add to excuses for why it's ok for someone who has been abused to behave poorly.  I'm working on figuring out a method of support that works for me.  I want people to see the incredible change and freedom I've experienced, but I'm also learning to accept that not all are ready for that and some might never be.  The last thing I'd want to do is hurt someone, especially another survivor.  Just like with my sponsor, I would only give this kind of "tough love" to someone I cared about and really believed could do better.  Just like with the little boy with all the fears that I mentioned last post.  I could've just let him sit out and skip all the activities.  But I cared about him and I wanted to see him succeed so I pushed him.  He got mad at me, he yelled at me, he cried at me, but eventually he had success.  And he came home to his mom smiling and proud.

For years I was the queen of, whenever someone pushed me to do/try something, saying that they were mean, didn't understand, etc.  So I know that this kind of stuff will often not be well received.  So I guess, for now, that's where I struggle.  But I will be forever grateful to my sponsor for truly caring about me, and not just taking the easy way out and saying "oh poor baby it's ok."  She let me get mad at her so I could heal.  Not a lot of people would be willing to do that.  I'm also grateful that I was able to see her message and stay on track.  And I'm grateful to my higher power for bringing her to me at just the right time.

One last thing and then I'm going to shut up because this is getting super long and very circular.  I just want to say to whoever might be reading this and thinking yeah right she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about, or wanting to call bullshit, or thinking it won't work for you or whatever...when I described my whole story to someone online she told me it was one of the worst she'd heard.  Everyone experiences, survives, and heals differently, but I've seen some pretty dark depths.  I'm not saying this all from happy la la unicorns and rainbows perfect happy life land.  As cliche as it sounds, if it worked for me I really genuinely believe it can work for others.  And it's so so SO worth it!  I never thought I could have a life like the one I do now.