Heal The Abuse - Recover Your Life (13 page)

The worst thing that ever happened to me when
I allowed myself to grieve is that I had to call in sick so I could
cry and spend some time alone. That experience didn’t kill me. I’m
still here, and I’m healthier because of it.

Allow yourself to experience your feelings.
Allow yourself to grieve. It is the way to let go.

Personal Journal Entries

Entry #1
:
Letting Go

I don’t understand why I feel so much pain
lately. Why do I feel this way?

(My wise, inner voice): You have decided that
you will never again accept abuse from other people. There’s no
reason to hold onto your pain anymore. You can let go of it. When
you reject abuse from others, it means you are ready to begin to
release the pain of your past.

It’s true. I have decided that I will no
longer accept abuse from others. I have decided that my self-esteem
is more important than any relationship.

I need to let go of my fears, and the only
way to do that is to allow myself to feel them.

Fear keeps me holding on. Fear makes me want
to numb my feelings. Fear keeps me in addiction and despair. Fear
pushes me to try and control things I cannot and should not
control.

(My wise, inner voice): You can let go of
your fear. You can allow yourself to feel your pain. This is a
natural process.

The core of this issue is my desire to
control the way I feel. I don’t always need to be in control. I can
allow myself to feel afraid. I can allow myself to cry. I can allow
myself to let go.

Exercise 13-1

Grieving Exercises

1. Ask yourself if there’s anything you need
to grieve. Is there any pain you’ve been holding onto or avoiding?
Something you haven’t wanted to face about the abuse or your
childhood? Take this opportunity to let go. Cry and release in a
safe place if you need to.

2. Take some time to think about your
relationship with your abuser or abusers. Who were they? What was
their relationship to you? How did they treat you? Did you ever
wish they had been different? Do you still wish they were someone
they can never be? Cry and release in a safe place if you need
to.

3. Think about your childhood. What was it
like? Were you made to act like an adult at a young age? Did you
have a traditional childhood, or was it cut short? Did you lose
your innocence or your dreams for a better life? Cry and release in
a safe place if you need to.

4. Think about the abuse. Was it painful?
Were you afraid? What hurt the most? The physical abuse, the
emotional pain, the fear, or the betrayal? Cry and release in a
safe place if you need to.

5. Think for a moment about how you have
treated yourself as a result of the abuse. Have you hurt yourself
with addictions? Have you put yourself in unsafe situations? Have
you subjected yourself to further abuse? Cry and release in a safe
place if you need to.

Stepping Stones to Health

Grieving

-Try to identify where you are in the
stepping-stones to health, and the next step or steps you need to
take.

_____ 1. I still carry the pain and grief of
my past, but I’m not ready to release it.

_____ 2. I don’t like the pain and grief of
my past, yet I’m afraid of crying or letting go.

_____ 3. I have learned that if you bottle up
your pain, you will never get past it.

_____ 4. There have been times when I felt so
much pain that I couldn’t hold on to it anymore and I cried.

_____ 5. I’m tired of this pain. I’m tired of
trying to shut it off with alcohol, drugs, and other addictions. My
pain just keeps getting worse.

_____ 6. I have read self-help books or
looked for information on how to release my pain.

_____ 7. I am beginning to challenge what I
was told as a child about grieving, and whether or not it might be
okay to allow myself to cry.

_____ 8. I allowed myself to cry once, and it
felt scary. It’s uncomfortable, but it was a relief to get those
feelings off my chest.

_____ 9. I allow myself to grieve whenever I
need to, and for as long as I need to. I realize that I can release
the pain of my past. I am a courageous soul when I allow myself to
cry and release my pain.

Exercise 13-2

Letting
Go
Exercise

The 12-step serenity prayer goes as
follows:

“God, please grant me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Repeat this prayer in your mind while
thinking about the things you have difficulty letting go of. Make a
list of the things in your life you cannot change. Then make a list
of the things you can do something about. Are you doing what you
can while still allowing God’s power in your life?

Exercise
13-3

The following exercise is reprinted from the
internet. The author is unknown:

To
Let
Go

To let go does not mean to stop caring, it
means I can’t do it for someone else.

To let go is not to cut myself off, it’s the
realization that I can’t control another person.

To let go is not to enable, but to allow
learning from natural consequences.

To let go is to admit powerlessness, which
means the outcome is not in my hands.

To let go is not to try to change or blame
another, it’s to make the most of myself.

To let go is not to care for, but to care
about.

To let go is not to fix, but to be
supportive.

To let go is not to judge, but to allow
another to be a human being.

To let go is not to be in the middle
arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own
destinies.

To let go is not to be protective, it’s to
permit another to face reality.

To let go is not to criticize or regulate
anyone, but to try to become what I dream I can be.

To let go is to fear less and love more.

Process
Questions

What do I need to let go of?

How does it feel when I hold onto the pain of
my past?

What are some of the things I can do to help
myself let go? (Crying, journaling, talking to a counselor or
friend about my problems or issues, talking into a tape recorder
about those issues and playing it back to myself, exercising,
repeating the serenity prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous, etc…)

How might my life change if I was able to let
go of the past?

Stepping Stones to Health

Letting Go

-Try to identify where you are in the
stepping-stones to health, and the next step or steps you need to
take.

_____ 1. I am a control freak, and I have a
hard time letting go.

_____ 2. I feel angry a lot, and tend to get
caught up in minor problems or issues.

_____ 3. It’s hard for me to let go, and I
prefer being in a position of power or control.

_____ 4. I can let go sometimes if it’s an
issue that doesn’t affect me very much.

_____ 5. There are some things in life that
just aren’t worth worrying about, and I try to let go of those
things.

_____ 6. I am starting to come to terms with
the fact that there are things in my life I cannot control, and
it’s alright.

_____ 7. I am beginning to replace some of my
fear with faith. I am starting to believe that things in my life
will work out in the way they need to.

_____ 8. I am capable of letting go of the
big things in life after I have processed my feelings about
them.

_____ 9. I am working on “letting go and
letting God.” I take responsibility for the things I can control,
and I give everything else to God or my higher power.

Chapter 14
–
The Inner Child

“Our inner child needs us, and we need our
inner child.”

-Jason Goodwin

A few years ago, I experienced a relationship
that really brought out the abused inner child within me. The woman
I was with reminded me of my abusers. She was cold and distant. She
treated me like a child, and I began to act like one. I found
myself feeling needy and afraid of abandonment.

How could this be, I thought? I was a
fully-grown adult. Why was this happening and why was I feeling so
much pain?

I used to have a hard time believing that
there was a part of myself, childlike in nature, that still felt
the pain of the abuse. It sounded strange to me or weird, like some
sort of therapeutic nonsense.

But it is a mistake to believe that we could
have responded to abuse that occurred in our childhood with all the
logic and understanding of an adult. If we were children when we
were abused, the logic we used to understand the abuse was
childlike.

Children often respond to events in their
lives with emotion rather than logic. They believe that they are to
blame for whatever happens to them, because they think they are the
center of the universe. It is difficult for a child to imagine why
someone would want to hurt or victimize him/her without good
reason. As a result, children often take responsibility for things
that are not their fault.

Survivors of abuse often develop fears of
abandonment. Sometimes this is because our needs for love and
attention were never adequately met. As we grow into adults, we
stay in abusive relationships because we are afraid of being
abandoned again.

It is logical for a child to believe that
he/she will die if he/she loses a relationship with a caregiver.
Children are helpless and completely dependent on adults for their
survival. But as we grow into adulthood, our fears of abandonment
become illogical and self-destructive. As adults, we do not need to
accept abuse from others. We do not have to remain in abusive
relationships. We have a choice.

Our lives become dysfunctional when we
continue to act out unhealthy behavior patterns we learned in
childhood. The part of us that smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol,
uses drugs, or is addicted to sex is often child-like in nature. It
cares only about the way it feels, and it wants to feel better
right now. There is no calculation of the cost and no consideration
of the future. This part of us is immature and impatient.

Have you ever watched a smoker who’s gone too
long without a cigarette? They get irritable. I know, because I
smoked cigarettes for over ten years. The addicted part of us wants
our cigarette/pacifier right now.

At a young age, children are driven primarily
by emotions. When they feel sad, they cry. When they feel happy,
they smile. When they want something, they scream and yell.
Children are very aware of their feelings, and they act
accordingly.

As adults, we learn to delay gratification.
We learn to consider the future. We come to understand that we
sometimes need to make sacrifices today in order to have a better
life tomorrow. We develop greater patience and realize that, even
if we can’t get all of our needs met this instant, we may be able
to fulfill some of our needs in the future.

Our inner child needs us, and we need our
inner child. The inner child is the part of us that helps us to
have fun. To let down our hair and “boogie” on the dance floor. To
feel happy and carefree on a sunny day. To give thanks for the
beautiful things in life.

For those of us who were sexually abused as
children, our inner child was deeply scarred. This pain is the
reason our inner child continues to act out. Sexual abuse often
creates a whirlwind of painful emotions that do not go away until
we allow ourselves to feel them and release them.

Much of what our inner child feels is grief.
My inner child has shed many tears. Neglected or abused children
often act out in self-destructive ways. Children experience pain on
a very deep level. When a child experiences something traumatic, it
may affect them for a very long time. A child who experiences
something as traumatic as sexual abuse may struggle with that pain
for the rest of his/her life.

At first, you may feel some resistance to
working with your inner child. It may seem silly at first. Yes,
here I am, talking to myself. No, really, I’m not crazy. I’m just
trying to heal every part of me. Yes, there are many different
parts of us. Some of them carry a lot of pain.

To make this process easier, I named my inner
child Jacob and created a mental picture of what he looked like. I
found that, whenever I spoke to Jacob, my mind knew exactly which
part of me I was talking to.

This part of me, the child deep inside who
endured the pain of sexual abuse, was able to make himself known.
He acts out when he is afraid. He feels hurt and abandoned when a
relationship doesn’t work out. And he wants to be loved, cared for,
and protected just like any other child.

Having compassion for our inner child means
having compassion for ourselves. As children, we may have never
received the love we wanted. As adults, it is our responsibility to
provide ourselves with as much love as we can. It is our
responsibility to care for our inner child, the part of us that
needs it the most.

At first, my inner child rejected the love I
was sending him. He felt so angry and bitter about the abuse. Jacob
refused to believe that anyone could possibly love him. He had
built up defensive walls to protect himself, and he was not about
to let anyone in.

But I continued sending him love, and I
repeated kind words to him. Most of the time, he became very upset.
He would break down, scream and yell, push me away, or get very
angry. He didn’t want to hear it.