Tag Archive: fear


Healing: Part 1 – How do I feel?

Filed under: The Courage to Heal — 4 Comments
September 10, 2012

Excerpt from The Courage to Heal pg xxiv ~” Time will dull the pain, but deep healing doesn’t happen uness you consciously choose it”~

John Eldridge says in his book Wild at Heart that “A wound unfelt is a wound unhealed.”  So I have to ask myself – how do I feel?  How has living with this abuse made me feel…?  Following along in the first chapter of Courage I have journaled the following:

How abuse affected my self esteem: 

I feel…..

  • Bad, dirty, ashamed
  • Like there’s something wrong with me
  • Like if people really knew me they would leave me
  • Like I hate myself
  • Immobilized by fear/can’t get motivated
  • Unable to protect myself
  • Self destructive

I don’t know how to….

  • Identify my own needs
  • Feel good
  • Nurture myself
  • Trust myself
  • Recognize my own interests/talents/goals (my heart)

I feel like I can’t accomplish what I set out to do

I feel like I can’t move on with my life.

I feel compelled to be perfect

I feel like I am missing large parts of my childhood…

How this abuse has affected my body:

I have a hard time:

  • Appreciating and accepting my body
  • Feeling at home in my own skin
  • Being fully present in my body
  • experiencing a full rang of feelings in my body.
  • experiencing my body as a unified whole.

I have:

  • Hurt myself ~abused my body
  • Used alcohol and drugs
  • Had an eating disorder
  • Had a physical illness connected to my abuse
  • Felt as though I sometimes leave my body.

Sometimes I:

  • Am not always aware of the messages my body gives me (hunger, fear, tiredness…)
  • Mistrust my body
  • Feel numb or disconnected from physical sensations
  • Startle easily and have a hard time calming down
  • Am unable to relax and feel physically safe.

Relating to intimacy – Sometimes I:

  • Find it difficult to: trust people, make close friends, create/maintain healthy relationships, give or receive nurturing, be affectionate, say no/set appropriate boundaries.
  • I feel I don’t deserve love
  • I am afraid of people
  • I feel alienated/isolated
  • I rarely feel connected to self/others
  • I don’t know how to trust
  • I feel betrayed and taken advantage of
  • I shut down, get nervous, panic when people get too close
  • I cling to people I care about
  • I expect people to leave me.

It is hard to take an honest look at my life – to survey the damage like I am taking inventory.  I don’t exactly know how to feel about all of this…mosty I look over the different aspects of my life and kind of nod to myself and think…”Well this explains a lot.”

Please bear with me dear readers.  I am by far not through this journey yet.

Peace be with you.

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The Courage to Heal

Filed under: The Courage to Heal — 4 Comments
September 9, 2012

I’ve been absent from the electronic world for quite a while now… I’ve been working on a wonderful book called “The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse” by Laura Davis and Ellen Bass.  It’s a wonderful therapeutic tool with several writing and meditation exercises.  This book has taken me on a journey though my anger, my pain and my memories.  Through it I am finding connections to my past in many unexpected places and through many maladaptive coping mechanisms.  I am learning to identify survival techniques that helped me claw my way out of hell but are no longer serving me now.  I am learning to honor those defense mechanisms and to release them.  By no means have I “arrived” but for possibly the first time in my life I am consistently traveling on the road to healing.  If you will permit me I would like to share more of that healing journey with you through sharing my journaling from this wonderful book as well as my writing exercises from it and an honest look at my anger and fear and the relinquishment of the same.  May love and peace find you-may it find me as well.

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Broken-hearted

Filed under: Healing — 5 Comments
July 27, 2012

I feel like I am drowning in fear, doubt, sadness, despair.  They are my near-constant companions.  I’m not sure I know what I am apart from them.  I don’t know what to do or where to go – God help me.

 

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Pain

Filed under: Healing — 4 Comments
June 12, 2012

It feels like a dream … I am walking through a field hoping to find some wild-flowers to make a bouquet… there is mist everywhere and it hangs so heavy I cannot see the ground. As the sun comes out and the mist clears I find that I am not in a meadow at all – but a battle-ground – bodies mutilated all around my feet… every face is my own… The only daisies here are resting on the closed eyes of the dead and my bare feet are wet not with dew but with blood.

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Drowning

Filed under: Healing — 3 Comments
April 21, 2012

Lately I feel like I am drowning in pain.  All I can think is, “I don’t know how to do this…”  It’s crippling, really…I feel frozen in this spot and I am afraid to reach for help.  No one can help me through this.  The pain of my past has finally caught up with me and is taking hold of my life… it’s ruining my marriage…it’s permeating my relationships….it’s taking over!  I see every relationship or potential relationship through the filter of my parent’s abuse.  I can’t go on living like this.  It is so terrifying and isolating and maddening.  I want to be free of it all.  I wish I could wash this off… I wish I could dust my ands off and be done with it.  I wish I could change my past and give myself a blank slate – a fresh start… I wish there was a pill for bad memories… I wish…I wish…

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Therapy Letter #3 – To my Husband

Filed under: Healing — 3 Comments
April 19, 2012

Dear M____,
This is the most difficult letter I will ever write to you. I know I have apologized a thousand times to you over the years and I know I have hurt you a million more. I know that you have no reason to hope for me to change, but I promise you I am trying. I realized this morning that I have become an abuser. The cycle must stop with me. You have pointed out to me that I have been abusing myself – but I realized this morning I have been abusing you as well.
All my life I learned that love meant judgement, rejection and pain. Though I had glimmers of real love in my grandmother, sadly, she wasn’t the stronger influence in my life. My toxic parents were…their lessons of love driven home much harder and deeper than hers. This is not an excuse, just an explanation. My life has been filled with overwhelming pain since birth and pain has been my constant companion. I don’t want this anymore.
All of those unhealthy abusive behaviors followed me from my parent’s home into ours. I have neglected you and withdrew into myself and withheld love from you. It does not matter that this was not a conscious decision or done with intent. The result is the same. Pain. Doubt. A crumbling marriage.
I realize this morning that the times I am feeling the most fear and panic and doubt are the times I need to be running to you – not away from you. Because of my fear of love and feelings of worthlessness I have continued my parent’s toxic abuse cycle with you in our marriage. I have been come the thing I hate. No wonder you don’t feel safe with me.
I don’t know why God brought us together but I fear that I don’t have much to offer you. I know I have a long road to recovery ahead of me and I know I won’t get it right all the time – but I promise to get it right more often than I get it wrong.
I want to tell you that I am profoundly sorry fo all the pain I caused you through the course of our relationship. I want to tell you that I truly understand if you don’t want anything to do with me – after all – I am more like our fathers than you mother or my grandmother. I am self-centered and neglectful nd don’t deserve another chance to hurt you. You have this beautiful, loving heart and I have done my best to destroy it. You don’t deserve this.
this is what I can promise you… I love you with all my heart and I am fully committed to you – to us- and I will do everything in my power to break this cycle. I will make better choices – when all of my instincts tell me to withdraw – to hide…I will make a conscious decision to seek your heart that much harder. When I feel like pulling away I will cling to us and to God. I will pray against my strongholds daily and I will seek God in our marriage. I will see you and love you and not hide myself from you. I will fight harder against the lies and patterns I was raised around and I will talk openly about my hopes, beliefs, fears and doubts instead of retreating into my head and locking down my heart.
I take full responsibility for the current problems in our marriage and I beg your forgiveness.
I love you M___. I pray that I haven’t ruined this.
Love,
No Longer Damaged Goods

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Me

Filed under: Healing — 1 Comment
April 17, 2012

I don’t know how to be in this much pain.

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Crumbling Life

Filed under: Healing — 5 Comments
March 17, 2012

There is so much I don’t understand about this life.  It feels like it is crumbling around me.. every time I feel safe – like I might possibly have a chance at being ok, like I might actually be beginning to grasp things and see some glimmer of day-light… it hits.  Life socks me right in the gut and tells me again how worthless I am. How am I supposed to stop believing that I am worthless when the evidence is all around me.  I hurt the people I love.  I am desperate for forgiveness – for absolution.  I pray and I pray… I am doing the work – reading the books… I am trying to get in touch with my heart and find some true peace but I don’t know if I will make it.  I am terrified.  There is one person on this earth who truly knows me and loves me and he can barely stand to be with me because I am so hurtful to him… I am screwing this up!  I am failing all over again and I don’t know what to do.  I can barely function.  I wish I could just die sometimes so I could stop hurting people…stop hurting me.  I wish I had never been born.  I wish I didn’t exist.  I keep praying for God to remake me… maybe I could be better -I don’t know.  I just know that there’s something profoundly wrong with me and I am afraid I’ll  never be right again.

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Setback in D Major

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February 18, 2012

The Dream:

I am spending time with my uncle, Eddie, and his 3 daughters.  We’re at my parent’s house listening to some Southern Gospel music and debating on the merits of the old Southern Gospel music vs modern Christian Rock..  We’re all laughing, teasing and so happy.   We’re flipping through CD’s and my MP3 player playlist… It’s a good day and I feel so safe and loved. 

So what makes this a nightmare?

My uncle is a rapist and a child molester and in my dream I don’t know this… in my dream I haven’t remembered what he has done to me and I don’t yet know what he is doing to his beautiful daughters.

The part of me that is always me (no matter what I am dreaming) is terrified and screaming at the dream me to get out of there !  I hate that I can feel so safe and terrified, so innocent and soiled all at the same time.  Most of all I hate how much this dream has set me back.   I hate how vulnerable I suddenly feel.  I hate how I can barely accept touch.  I hate how I want to hide away and not face all of this.  I hate the temptation to morph back into that robot of a woman and pretend that everything is fine even though I can barely breathe.

So what’s the plan?  I am going to breathe in and out.  I am going to face my fears.  I am going to feel this and not be a coward or a zombie.  I am going to admit that I have been hurt – terribly – and it is ok to be afraid for a while.  I am going to allow my husband to comfort me and allow myself some room to be vulnerable.  But most importantly, I am going to go through this.  No short-cuts or detours.  Because that is the only way I am ever really going to find peace. 

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Thoughts on doing battle

Filed under: Healing — 6 Comments
January 9, 2012

    

   I feel like I am in the fight of my life.  I am up against so much.  Not only am I still coming to terms with my past abuse, I am trying to break my present cycle of self-abuse.  I was feeling all proud of myself thinking I had come so far… and to be fair I have made a lot of progress – but I have a daunting amount of work ahead of me.  I am nearly crippled by this.  I don’t know how to be real.  I am really good at faking it.  I look great on paper – happily married, good career, room for growth and promotion in my field, 2 college degrees, a savings account, pets, friends… We own our home  and cook meals way more than we eat out… we hike when we can on weekends and try to play tennis once a month… The reality is  we don’t have it together.  I don’t have it together.  I don’t even know where “it” is to get it together.  I have no idea where to start.  I’m reading books, doing my devotions, listening to Christian music, going to therapy and yet “it” eludes me. 

    I don’t want to go through the motions, I want to live.  I am fighting to live – to breathe – to have a thought or opinion I don’t feel I have to apologize for.  I am sick to death of being sorry all the time!  What am I sorry for, existing? breathing? being?  I have no idea… I just feel perpetually apologetic and frankly pathetic!  This is not me… every fiber of my being screams and rails against this shell of a person I have become.  I have to defeat her.  She may have served a purpose at one time but those days are long gone and now instead of helping me she is slowly undermining me – turning me into a mindless, whimpering drone.  I am not this woman.  I am passionate and alive.  I am angry and strong and am not going to put up with this any more!  I am fierce and loving and loyal and I get what I want because I fight for it.  I am not this mousey, lay down and die disguise I have been wearing…  I am not this afraid to look you in the eyes broken down woman who I have been pretending to be lately. 

    I am putting on my armor – I am sharpening my weapons – I am stoking this furnace and I will burn off this shell in a wash of heat and light and hope.  I will find myself again and I will not be burdened by all of this fear any longer.  I deserve better.  I am worth fighting for and if any one is going to fight for me I had better start the battle.  I am loved, I am fiercely guarded, I am cherished, I am Captivating.  I will defeat these shackles and melt away these chains and I will rise up.  I am an amazing woman.  I am strong.  You haven’t seen anything yet.

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