I’ve heard from a lot of you that shared similar, or different, early life traumas. First, thanks for sharing, and glad my blogs have helped you deal with some of your own issues, even if its just to know that you’re not the only one. I thought I’d share with you some of the pitfalls that I’ve found in working my own issues, and meeting others that are working theirs. One of the biggest traps for those of us with serious early abuse whether it be emotional, verbal, physical, or sexual, or any combination thereof, is getting caught in the cycle of trying to redo our childhood trauma. What do I mean by that?
I mean some of us try to replay the damaged relationship with our parent over in our own adult relationships. Example: Your father was overbearing, verbally abusive, and tried to control your life. Then you go out and marry someone just like dear ol’ dad. You don’t do it in the front of your head, but in the back you want to win daddy’s love. You want to fix the bad parts of your childhood by trying it again with someone who reminds you of your father. Trouble is that the exact same things that made your childhood a nightmare will now make your marriage the same way. If you do not work your issues, your issues will work you.
Own your issues, work your issues, don’t repeat them.
Another example: You were raised by a mother who didn’t value your individuality, but tried to fit you in their very square, very “normal” box. As you grew all your happiness came from things outside that narrow box, but then you get married to someone as extreme and cutting edge as you are. You guys are blissfully happy, and love the new life you’re building, but there is a part of you that still hears your mother’s voice in the back of your head. Maybe even the front as she visits you, or talks on the phone to you. You’re grownup now she tells you, you should live the life she things you should live. You should be a grownup and be normal, and not be so bohemian. So you begin to try and fit yourself and your wonderful not normal husband into the box. The same narrow box that didn’t fit you as a teenager, or as a young adult, and now you’re trying to shove not only yourself into the box, but the man you love. Why are you doing it? First, some of us that are broken in childhood feel that one day when we find the love of our life, or the right job, or whatever that we will suddenly fit in, and suddenly be “normal”. Some of us will do a great deal to try and fit into that narrow, narrow definition. The saddest for me is when wonderful people begin to cut and chop at themselves, and the people they love, to try and force everyone into the box, so they will finally “fit in”. And this scenario is also an adult who is still striving for their mother’s approval. You won’t get it, by the way. Or if you do, it will come at the price of everything that makes you happy, everything that makes you who you are, until there is nothing left but a shadow of what the mother-figure wanted in her perfect daughter, or son.
I did a version of the above, by the way. I thought when I found the love of my life that I wouldn’t want some of the things I wanted. I thought the perfect love would make me not want bondage and submission sex, or other non-standards things. My husband, Jonathon, had the same issue, so we were both trying to fit each other in that box. The issue of trying to be “normal” worked us over like a punching bag. Until we had the revelation that maybe its not about being “normal” maybe its about being happy. We’ve embraced our happy. In doing so, we found that BDSM isn’t even close to the entirety of our sexuality, but just admitting that it’s part of who we are, was almost more important than any actual sex.
You also get people marrying someone as disapproving as their mother, or father, who will make them conform just like the parents did. You also get the person who rejects everything good with their upbringing and will be actively destructive to themselves in an effort not to be like dear old mom and dad. Both extremes continue the damage done to us in our childhood. It keeps us perpetual victims. We in effect become our own abusers. How do we stop this cycle?
Therapy, good therapy, let me add. Bad therapy is sometimes just another kind of abuse. So hunt well, and research for the right therapist. It helps to find people with similar problems that have been happy with theirs, and where you’ve seen them make real progress with their own issues. That’s a therapist you want.
Now, you have to do the work though. A therapist doesn’t have a magic wand to wave over you. You have to be willing to look at the issues and work them. If you do not work your issues, they will work you. Just getting out of the house where you were neglected, or abused, doesn’t stop the problems. Some of us take the prison of our childhood with us wherever we go, because it becomes not an external prison with bars, but an internal one. Both types of prisons have keys, the internal ones, are just harder to find and understand, but you can do it. I’ve done it. I’m still doing it as I work at giving up the pain I was given. Giving up the pain is actually hard, because it’s your pain and you’re familiar with it. People have a tendency to cling to the familiar even if it’s hurtful. Let it go, new and better things will come to fill that pain-shaped hole. If you first let go of the pain, it can fill up with love, or confidence, or simply joy.
I do my work now through meditation, and my spiritual path. Deity wants us to be happy, honest they do. But we have free will and I’ll share a saying with you. “No plan so well made, that free will can’t fuck it up.” Unfortunately, very true. But the plan is for us all to be happy, healthy, and the best us we can be.
So, all of you, that told me that my issues spoke to yours, let go of your pain, let go of your hate, let go of your fear, because until we do we are still the victims of our families. Forgive them, maybe, but I’m not there yet. But I do know I had to let the anger go, because it was only hurting me. My grandmother’s dead, me being angry with her, doesn’t hurt her at all. But it was hurting me, so I let it go. Will it return? Yes, when something else reminds me of some old wound, or when I’m ready to look at more of the issues. Then the emotions get raw, and real again, but until then I’m calmer, I feel better, and I am not letting my childhood trauma rain all over my present day life.
But more than that, I’ve come to understand that the bad things in my past have made me who I am today, and I like me. I like the life I’ve built, and the people in it. People talk about being an abuse survivor, in a way we are all survivors of our childhoods, but the word survivor smacks of victim. I want a new word, because so many of us have not merely survived, we have thrived. We have thrived sometimes in spite of, but for me, at least, in part because of the bad things. I have found a way to make all that sad into a job, and a voice, and a career, that I love. I write out the darkness, and the bravery, and the good, and the bad, and you guys tell me it touches you, speaks to you. That is valuable, and without my rather interesting childhood I’m not sure I’d have that. Bad things can become the fuel for very good things.
But more than that I know I survived terrible things, and whenever I doubt myself I remember that. I remember what I’ve been through and that I’ve made positives out of all those negatives. The trick is don’t repeat the bad patterns, but first you must know what the patterns are, to avoid them.
I don’t call myself a survivor anymore. I still don’t have quite the right word for it, but I thrive, I succeed, I do not just survive, I thrive. Thriver, just doesn’t have quite the right ring, but its close. I own the positives in my own life, and remember all the negatives that I had to squeeze hard to make all this lemonade.
I’ll leave you with a thought that came to me a few days ago.
It is the places where crystals are broken, or imperfect, where you find rainbows. People can be like that, too. We shine brightest from the places where we’re hurt the deepest. Rainbows trace our wounds so that some of us sparkle and dance in the light with so many colors. Each one a badge of joy to show we not only survived, but thrived.
