Heal The Abuse - Recover Your Life (22 page)

Phase 3
–
Months 7-9

1. If you are in an intimate relationship and
you are considering a commitment to this person, try living
together first if it doesn’t violate your religious beliefs. Living
together can be very different than dating. Try living together for
at least 3 months before proceeding to the next phase.

2. Have a conversation about living together.
Is it something you think can work? Are there things you can do to
make your life together more comfortable? Is your partner overly
controlling about your living arrangements?

3. Do not allow the move to severely disrupt
your life. Keep your financial commitments to under a thousand
dollars initially. Have an escape route. If you can, maintain your
current residence while living with your partner, or make sure that
you can move out at a moment’s notice. Do not move any great
distance. Do not change jobs. Do not assume that it will work
out.

4. Do not make any long-term commitments or
promises during this time.

5. Try to look realistically at whether or
not your partner has changed since you moved in with him/her. Has
he/she begun to act differently? Has he/she become disrespectful?
Do you enjoy living with this person? Are you comfortable, or are
you “walking on egg-shells?” In what ways has he/she changed? Does
your relationship make you feel better about yourself or worse?

6. If you like your living arrangements and
it seems to be working out, consider moving to the next phase. If
you realize that you can’t trust this person during Phase 3, or if
you or he/she has become abusive or disrespectful, don’t let the
relationship continue.

Phase 4
–
Months 10-12

1. At this point, it is important to disclose
anything else about yourself that may cause problems for the
relationship. See if this person can be trusted with the
information you want to share with them.

2. If you are considering a long-term
commitment, or even marriage, have a discussion about what you
want. Talk about the way you believe married people should behave
and the way they should treat one another. What does your partner
expect from a marriage? Do they want children? Do you have similar
spiritual beliefs?

3. Do not make a long-term commitment at this
point unless you are comfortable with the answers to these
questions.

4. Do not make any major life changes in this
phase.

5. If you feel happy about being together,
living together, and the way your partner treats you, you may want
to move to Phase 5. If you realize that you can’t trust this person
during Phase 4, or if you or he/she has become abusive or
disrespectful, don’t let the relationship continue.

Phase 5
–
Month 13+

1. At this point, you can make long-term
commitments if you decide to and increase your level of risk. If
your relationship has reached Phase 5, you have done a good job of
finding balance between getting your needs met and ensuring your
safety. It is important to ask your partner if he/she feels that
his/her needs are being met in the relationship. If not, are there
ways that you can both work to fix the problems? Are you able to
show your partner that you love him/her in the way that he/she
wants to be loved? (Please refer to
The Five Love
Languages
by Gary Chapman for more information.) Both
partners must feel that their needs are being met in the
relationship to be happy.

2. If you discover later that you can’t trust
this person, or if you or he/she has become abusive or
disrespectful, don’t let the relationship continue.

While no plan is perfect, sticking to this
plan can help us stay with partners who are trustworthy and avoid
partners who are not. We can’t control whether a partner will be
faithful. We can’t predict who will be worthy of our trust. So we
need to have a policy for relationships that increases our chances
of finding honest partners and friends. Caution is the best
defense. A trustworthy partner will not be offended by our caution
if we are reasonable about it. In fact, they’ll probably respect us
more.

Stepping Stones to Health

Trust

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

_____ 1. I don’t trust anyone, or I trust
everyone right away.

_____ 2. I have been hurt by people in the
past.

_____ 3. I have a hard time understanding who
I should trust and when I should give my trust.

_____ 4. I don’t know if I should trust
anyone, because some people are untrustworthy.

_____ 5. I am starting to think that I need
to take a balanced approach to this issue of trust.

_____ 6. I am coming up with a policy on how
quickly I trust people and let them into my life.

_____ 7. I approach people with caution and
allow them to earn my trust. I only give my trust to people who
tell the truth and show me they are trustworthy over time.

Chapter 24
–
Forgiving

“Forgiveness is giving up the possibility of
a better past.”

-Mike D.

Forgiveness can be thought of as the final
step in the healing process. Some of us have attempted to forgive
too quickly. I believe that genuine forgiveness only happens after
we have processed our feelings and regained our self-esteem.

The process we go through on our way to
forgiving an abuser lies completely within our own hearts and
minds. We cannot wait for the day our abusers will apologize for
what they did. We cannot hold out for the day when they will
finally love us.

People tell survivors to just “get over it.”
They don’t understand why we seem to hang onto the past or hold
onto our pain. Why we continue to act out addictions or stay in
abusive relationships. Sometimes our inability to forgive is an
inconvenience to others. We’re no fun. Why do we keep bringing it
up? Why can’t we just forget about it and move on?

Most people who were never sexually abused
cannot understand how damaging it is, or how difficult it can be to
heal. Getting punched by a bully in fifth grade is not the kind of
trauma we struggle with until we are forty years old, fifty years
old, or for the rest of our lives. Lesser traumas tend to heal more
quickly.

Some people minimize the harmful and lasting
effects of sexual abuse. They talk about what happened as if we had
skinned our knee. Because they lack a common frame of reference,
they truly cannot comprehend the depth of what we experienced.

As survivors of sexual abuse, we feel guilty
when we have a hard time forgiving our abusers. We berate ourselves
for feeling so angry. We grow impatient with our own healing
process. We interrogate ourselves with unfair questions.

“Why is it so hard for me to get past this?
Why am I having such a hard time healing? Is there something wrong
with me? Why can’t I let go?”

One way to measure the trauma of sexual abuse
is to compare it with other crimes and other survivors.

What about robbery? As survivors of sexual
abuse, we were definitely robbed. Robbed of our self-respect and
self-esteem. Some of us were robbed of our virginity, our safety,
and our dignity. We may have been robbed of our innocence or our
childhood. Few victims of robbery can say they lost that much.

Torture? Some of us endured torture not once
or twice, but over years of sexual abuse. We experienced
psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual torture. We were
deeply traumatized and made to feel incredibly powerless.

Murder? Many of us would have preferred death
to the abuse we experienced. Some survivors give up hope and commit
suicide. Others kill themselves slowly by staying in physically
abusive relationships or destroying their bodies with drugs and
alcohol. Some survivors continue to place themselves in risky
situations by engaging in prostitution or working in the adult
entertainment industry.

Of course, it is not my intention to discount
the trauma experienced by other types of survivors. I simply wish
to illustrate that sexual abuse is the most hurtful thing one
person can do to another. Yes, we can heal. But this kind of
healing takes time.

We do not need to try and forgive before we
are ready to. It is not our job to make other people feel better
about what happened to us. We need to heal at a pace we are
comfortable with. We need to give ourselves credit, not only for
surviving the trauma of sexual abuse, but for having the strength
to continue to move forward with our lives.

Healing the pain of sexual abuse can be a
long process. Reaching the point where we can forgive is a
tremendous gift. Recurring flashbacks and nightmares about the
abuse are not something any of us want to live with for the rest of
our lives.

When true forgiveness happens, it is to be
cherished and celebrated. It means that deep healing has occurred.
It means we have begun to transcend something that was terribly
painful. We have begun to overcome the past.

Until we are ready to forgive, it can be
therapeutic to speak words of forgiveness out loud or write them in
a journal, even if we don’t really believe them yet. Saying the
words “I forgive you” can help us get in touch with all the reasons
we can’t forgive. Speaking words of forgiveness can help us to
process the pain, anger, and resentment that still lies within
us.

Hanging on to anger and resentment can
eventually hurt us more than the abuser. It drains our energy and
keeps us focused on events in our past that were very negative.
Yes, we need to allow ourselves to feel our feelings. But yes, it
does feel better when we can finally let go.

Personal Journal Entries

Entry #1: Forgiving Abusers

Sometimes I say words of forgiveness out loud
because it helps me get in touch with all the reasons I can’t
forgive. It brings up all the pain and anger still inside of
me.

“I forgive you for your betrayal and your
treachery. As cruel as you were, I forgive you anyway. I forgive
you for hurting me, and I give your pain back to you. I forgive you
for the things you did to hurt me.

I forgive the blackness in your heart. I
forgive you for the times you couldn’t love me, the times when you
were cold and unavailable. I forgive you for your abuse and for
your rage. For trying to scare me, control me, and use me for your
own purposes.

I forgive your lack of concern for the way I
felt. I forgive your ignorance and your cruelty.

I know there is a better person inside of you
somewhere, even if you could not show it when you were abusing me.
You need to heal your own pain, grief, and fear. I am not
responsible for you. I am responsible for me.

I let go of what you did to me. I forgive
you.”

Personal Journal Entries

Entry #2
:
Forgiving Ourselves

I have to let go. I need to move forward. I
don’t want these memories renting space in my head anymore. I want
to release my pain and my fear. I want to get past my temptation to
sabotage myself and go back to my addictions. I want to transcend
my anger and my resentments.

What is the solution? Forgiveness. Forgiving
my inner child for being afraid. For wanting to survive. For
wanting to be loved. For wanting to trust and have someone he could
rely on. For wanting to be taken care of.

I need to cry and I need to grieve. But most
of all, I need to forgive. Forgive myself for everything I did and
didn’t do. For everything I wanted and didn’t want. For all of my
love and all of my hate, all of my fear and all of my strength. To
forgive every part of me that did what was necessary to survive
years of abuse.

Process
Questions

Who in my life will I eventually need to
forgive?

What feelings come up for me when I think of
forgiving that person?

What makes it difficult for me to forgive
him/her?

What would have to happen for me to forgive
him/her?

Think about all of the reasons you resent
this person. Then practice saying, “I forgive you for (each item)”
out loud, several times. Repeat this process daily until you begin
to believe it. Write down whatever feelings come up for you and the
reasons you find it difficult to forgive that person.

How can I process my feelings about this
person? (Write him/her a letter I do not send, talk to a counselor
or friend about what he/she did, sit with my feelings, cry, do some
journaling, etc…)

Chapter 25
–
Values

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up
somewhere else.”

-Yogi Bera

To discover what we truly value, we need to
ask ourselves a few important questions. What is it that I treasure
and hold in high esteem? How do I spend my time and my money?

If we find that we are placing too much
emphasis on the wrong things, it may be time to make a change. What
would we like to focus on? Is our behavior consistent with our
values? Will our actions bring about our heart’s desire?

Most of us don’t set out to become alcoholics
or addicts, because addictive behavior is not consistent with our
values. Addictions develop over time. They often grow worse without
us even realizing it.

Each person’s values are slightly different,
but most of us have similar beliefs about the difference between
right and wrong. When we fail to live by our personal code of
conduct, we are not living with integrity.