F*ck Feelings (12 page)

Unfortunately, recovery from abuse usually requires long-term retraining rather than catharsis, and guilty feelings of responsibility and the destructive urges that go with them tend to linger long after kids have grown up and escaped the coercion of their past.

So don't expect to overcome child abuse by gathering courage to confront your abuser. Feeling validated and knowing that he's exposed and punished may not improve depression, despair, and loneliness. What does help, however, is to learn how to value yourself and fight self-destructive urges.

So the long-term symptoms that arise from child abuse—depression, anxiety, PTSD—may or may not be helped by confrontation, direct or indirect. Indeed, they may not be curable by any treatment. What is most important, however, is that the abuse victim understands that he is not responsible for causing or clearing up symptoms, but for living a meaningful life in spite of them. That's the only sure way to stand up to child abuse: by living a full life in spite of it, not defined by it, as a healthy adult.

Among the wishes people express are:

• To stop anxiety, depression, and self-harmful urges

• To break the pattern and stop choosing friends and partners who are abusive

• To feel happy, confident, or normal

• To get closure on their experience

Here are three examples:

My father stopped abusing me after I told the school social worker, and now I'm seeing a therapist who is trying to help me with depression. The therapist thinks I don't want to see my father punished because I'm trying to protect him, but I'm also worried about what will happen to the family if he's in jail and we're broke. My mother can't work, and I have older siblings who were never hit and will have to drop out of school if my parents can't help pay. My goal is to figure
out what will be best for my recovery and how to find treatment that will help.

It turns out my daughter was abused by her stepfather when he was drinking and I didn't know, and now I feel terrible. She was seeing a therapist because she was cutting herself, skipping curfew, and hanging out with a much older drug user who was clearly taking advantage of her. I've told her I'm sorry, and that I was so busy trying to keep things going that I was blind to what was really going on, but she's as angry and depressed as ever and I just don't know what to do. My goal is to help her recover from this horrible trauma, for which I feel responsible.

I was molested by a family friend whenever the two families spent a lot of time together when I was a child, and now, ten years later, treatment has helped me realize how inappropriate it was and how much I hated him for it. When I told my parents, they were shocked and very supportive, but they're close to this man's entire family and they don't want to say anything, particularly now that he's old and unwell. I've told them if they won't, I will. My goal is to make sure this can't happen again, strike a blow for honesty and openness, and help my own recovery.

There's an all-or-nothing quality to the anger experienced by survivors of abuse that, while perfectly understandable, is very hard to change and manage. Whether you turn it on others or yourself, it leaves little room for trust, hope, or compromise and is pure poison for relationships with others and your desire to live. The anger is as powerful, destructive, and erratic as a
natural
disaster, except the cause is anything but.

Focusing that anger on the abuser seems like the obvious choice—he certainly deserves it—but doing so doesn't make the pain go away. It may also hold false promise for relief and healing that, when broken, could make the pain worse.

You may feel comforted by a therapist who joins you in your
anger against your abuser and other people in your life who treat you badly. As time goes by, however, you have to ask yourself whether it's really helping. Your feelings may be validated, but your long-term goal is not to hate your enemies, regardless of how hateful they are, but to find friends who are basically trustworthy and learn how to manage extreme feelings, whether you're trying too hard to be liked or getting too angry when you're hurt. Make sure your therapy can provide you with tools and good coaching for that difficult task.

A good way to educate yourself about remedies that help you manage extreme feelings is to read the curriculum for a cognitive/behavioral treatment called DBT (dialectical behavior therapy). It provides ideas, exercises, and values for training yourself to respond constructively when you feel hate and despair. It doesn't make those feelings go away, unfortunately, and frustrating them can temporarily make them worse. The fact that you've prevented yourself from doing something destructive, however, like hurting yourself or blowing off a friendship, can protect you from re-traumatizing yourself and, in the end, give you a better life.

If you're the parent or friend of someone who happens to have the extremely negative feelings that result from abuse, advising her on how to manage feelings is much more helpful than trying to ease, or take responsibility for, her pain. If you feel responsible, think carefully about what you actually controlled and apologize, but don't let guilt get you to blindly encourage and tolerate venting, accusations, and mean behavior.

Instead, remind yourself that neither you nor she deserves pain and that she has to learn to manage it, or it will cause more pain. Familiarize yourself with DBT or some other cognitive/behavioral approach to managing negativity, and encourage her to do likewise. Then remove yourself from negative conversations and try to focus her in a positive direction.

If you wonder whether disclosure to family will help, don't do it for catharsis. Instead, add up the positive and negative consequences. Of course disclosure is necessary if it's the only way to prevent further abuse (or if you're
a legally mandated reporter). Otherwise, it may stir up a hornet's nest among friends and family who can't tolerate the truth and can thus cause further isolation and conflict for the victim. What's important is not airing the truth and punishing the criminal (especially if s/he can no longer hurt anyone else), but getting as much support and understanding as you can from those who have it to give.

Not all abuse victims are troubled by negative feelings, but most must carry some burden of pain, anxiety, and mistrust that doesn't disappear, even with good therapy and loving friends. When they can endure those feelings and nevertheless find a reason to live, love, and restrain negative impulses, they've truly overcome their trauma. The negative emotions may still be powerful enough to linger, but positive actions are what matter.

Here's what you wish for and can't have:

• A world in which abuse doesn't occur

• Freedom from pain, trauma, doubt, self-hate, and yearnings for bad people and bad substances

• Reliable healing through catharsis, intense support, or anything quick

• Healing through punishment and a slow and painful revenge

Here's what you can aim for and actually achieve:

• Improve safety

• Get better at controlling self-destructive behavior

• Gain perspective that is less distorted by negative feelings and close relationships

• Gain hope in a better future

Here's how you can do it:

• Report and stop child abuse whenever you encounter it

• Discuss methods for evaluating how you're doing and what's important for you that are not reactive to intense negative feelings or the opinion of others

• Practice methods for staying in touch with your goals and values when you're flooded with negative feelings

• Find coaches and supporters who can reinforce your progress

• Take pride in what you've accomplished, despite continuing pressure to despair and hurt yourself and your relationships

Here's what to tell someone/yourself when you're feeling abuse-related fear and despair.

Dear [Me/Abuser/Person Who Has Disappointed Me But May Not Be Abusive/Indifferent Jerk],

I feel as if life is [insert synonym for “bullshit”] and the people I care most about don't really respect [what I have to give/me, since they've used me like a Wet-Nap at a clambake], but I know my childhood left me with horrible feelings and even more horrible taste in friends. I will continue to avoid [drinking/drugging/hanging out with Assholes], attend meetings with like-minded people, keep on working if I can, and review the exercises that remind me about what I value in life and myself.

Getting your due, in spite of most people's inflated expectations of what they deserve, is a reasonable goal only if you're under the age of seven. Children often use fairness as the main argument for both getting what they want and avoiding what they don't want, and it's also why their arguments often end in tears.

It would certainly be a better world if you could count on
getting what you deserve if you stand up for yourself and appeal to the right authorities. But facts are often impossible to confirm, and authorities have the same weaknesses as everyone else, so it's no wonder that fights about fairness escalate fast. When parents are the authority, they can just tell kids that life isn't fair. When adults accuse other adults of unfair behavior, it implies they're bad, and the nastiness that results is usually much worse than a time-out.

A righteous strike for fair wages may push your job overseas, or getting your spouse to understand your point may win you a cold shoulder and weeks of couples therapy. The amount of passion you
feel
for getting what you deserve, however, should tell you it's a dangerous wish and force you to think twice before adopting it as a goal and making it a cause.

Instead, if you haven't gotten anywhere after you've done your best to push your case, check out the attitudes and past actions of the people who stand in your way. Almost always, you'll find their words and actions reflect values that are not likely to change and will not allow them to agree with you about what you believe is fair. If you argue that your ideas about fairness have greater moral weight than theirs, you can expect them to respond similarly. Ultimately, the more you're right, the more they'll hate you.

So instead of having a tantrum, stop damaging your case and discover whether it's possible to make a deal using different incentives than guilt and fairness, or whether no deal is possible and you have to accept the pain of feeling screwed. Sure, the latter choice feels supremely unfair, but as grown-ups, we accept that that's just the way life can be.

Life never guarantees you a square deal, but you can be a good, realistic dealer in an unfairly chaotic marketplace if you assume that no one necessarily sees things the way you do, no matter how obvious the truth appears, and that getting what you deserve is a lucky event, not a right. You might have good reason to feel badly treated, but you can't be stopped from giving yourself a time-out to regroup, then making the best of a bad deal.

Among the wishes people express are:

• To get a system they believe in to work for them

• To get no more than what they deserve, and no less

• To make the system work better for everyone

• To get the boss to see what's fair

Here are three examples:

I was promised a promotion eighteen months ago, but it clearly hasn't happened. Meanwhile, a guy who's old buddies with the boss has moved ahead instead. I've had terrific performance reviews, though I think my boss was bothered when I raised an ethics concern that he didn't think we should worry about. Now I'm wondering whether I should speak to HR or share my concerns first with my boss. My goal is just to get ahead and get the promotion he knows I deserve.

My husband says he needs to spend time with the guys every night because he works hard to support his family and will go crazy if he can't blow off steam, but I work too, and he leaves me alone with the kids every night. When I tell him it isn't fair, he tells me I'm nagging and that's another reason he's not home in the evening, because he doesn't like my nagging or the pressure I put on him to be Superdad. My goal is to get him to see that he's not doing his share as a husband or parent.

My parents treat my brother like he can do no wrong, and they're always urging me to spend time with him and try to build him up. In truth, he's an alcoholic and fuckup, but I love him and would like to see him get ahead. What drives me crazy, though, is the way my parents take my success for granted and give me a hard time whenever they think I've made my brother unhappy. Sometimes I'd really like to tell them all off. My goal is to have a relationship with my parents that isn't unfairly distorted by my brother's needs.

Unfair treatment is often paid forward; many times when you feel someone is treating you unfairly, that person feels she's under unfair pressure herself, making tough decisions, asking you for something you should provide, and getting less than the understanding and respect she deserves. It should be a Chinese proverb that he who dishes out the most shit feels the most like the toilet of the world.