Overcoming Sexual Abuse » rejection

Why I Talk About My Childhood Abuse Over and Over

Christina Enevoldsen — Sun, 13 May 2012 06:43:00 +0000

by Christina Enevoldsen

When I used to talk about my childhood sexual abuse, I heard familiar accusations: “You just want attention” or “Nobody likes a crybaby.” As I poured out the same story again and again to my friends, I felt guilty for wasting their time.

I believed that there was a rule that I was allowed to share a bad experience with one or two people at the most and then I had to stop talking about it or I was “just being a victim”. Yet I was compelled to keep talking about it even with the internal accusations and the guilt that it caused.

I was warned that “dwelling” on things doesn’t serve any purpose—that it would just make me feel worse. But I was already depressed and it wasn’t from talking about my abuse. I was depressed because my trauma and the feelings that went with it were locked up inside of me. As I started to see some benefit from talking about my abuse, I started to question the limited talking “rule”.

Where did I get the idea that attention is bad or selfish? When I wanted someone to hear me, why did the voice in my head say, “You think you’re so important, but you’re not”.

One of my earliest memories is of myself as a two year old. I don’t remember what I needed or if it was a physical or emotional need, but when I found my parents, they were with my baby brother. They acted annoyed that I had needs too. Their reaction communicated that I was expecting too much, that I was selfish, that having needs was something to be ashamed of.

Throughout my childhood, that message was reinforced in so many ways. I was emotionally abandoned if I cried or expressed “negative” feelings. My parents ignored my crying, so I coughed instead. My dad would come to my crib and mock my fake cough, but he wouldn’t acknowledge my needs or tend to them. His mocking told me that my needs weren’t important and added the additional message that I was a liar who exaggerated my needs.

I learned that I wasn’t tolerable unless I was happy so I learned to shut up about my needs and my pain. Acting like everything was okay was the only way to avoid more pain from rejection.

As an adult, whenever I talked about the past, I hated myself for exposing my “badness” and “making” people walk away from me. I expected to be abandoned the same way my parents had abandoned me and I abandoned myself during the times that I needed the most comfort.

Seeing where those beliefs and behaviors came from allowed me to see that I’m a worthy of love even when I express my pain or talk about the awful things that happened to me.

In my healing from abuse, I’ve found that there are two parts to recovery: Dealing with the damage and providing the things for myself that are lacking. Talking about my abuse is the means to both of those things.

1. As I’ve talked about my past, I’ve come to accept that it really happened. After repressing the memories of my traumatic childhood, it was unbelievable that the images in my head really happened—and they didn’t just happen to someone, they happened to ME. I went over it again and again—in my mind and with others. Sometimes, when I shared my story, I felt like a liar even though I knew I wasn’t making it up. I’d go in and out of denial and then at some point, I really got it. Talking about my abuse helped me accept the truth. This wasn’t a TV show or news story—this was my story.

Talking to understanding and compassionate people was the gateway to feeling compassion and pain for myself and acknowledging the depth of my loss. When I finally sat still with my experience and listened to my heart, I finally FELT heard.

2. I talked about my abuse because I needed to know what happened to me really mattered. The way I was treated as a child told me that my feelings didn’t matter—that I didn’t matter. I was wasting someone’s time since I was a waste of time. The horror and tears on a friend’s face told me that what happened to me really was bad and that I wasn’t making a big deal out of nothing. What happened to me was wrong. I deserved to be treated better.

3. Telling my story has been a way to reach out for the validation I never got. Since I dissociated during my abuse and for so much of my life, I wasn’t connected to myself, especially to my emotional self. Talking to understanding and compassionate people was the gateway to feeling compassion and pain for myself and to acknowledging the depth of my loss. When I finally sat still with my experience and listened to my heart, I finally felt heard.

4. Talking about my abuse allows me to hear myself. As I listen, I hear myself emphasize details that I’d thought were insignificant. It’s given me greater understanding of my feelings and behaviors today. I’ve make connections between past events and current feelings and behaviors. I’ve solved today’s problems by looking back at how I got here.

For the most part, when I talk about my abuse now, it’s for someone elses benefit. However, when a new memory surfaces or I delve into a deeper layer, I share it with my friends and I give myself all the time I need to process it.

I used to feel the pressure to get it all out quickly since I wanted to stop before I was abandoned, but now I’m patient with myself and no matter how long I talk or grieve, I don’t abandon myself in the process. I know I’m worth all the time it takes to heal.

Now that you’ve heard my experience and thoughts about this, I’d love to hear yours. Please comment below and don’t forget to subscribe to the comments so you can continue to partake in the discussion.

Christina Enevoldsen is cofounder of Overcoming Sexual Abuse, an online resource for male and female abuse survivors looking for practical answers and tools for healing. Christina’s passions are writing and speaking about her own journey of healing from abuse and inspiring people toward wholeness. She and her husband live in Los Angeles and share three children and four grandchildren.

[read Christina's story here]

Peace and Protection From Abuse

Christina Enevoldsen — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:30:22 +0000

by Christina Enevoldsen

The sun was falling behind the trees, the wind was gusting and the child desperately sought refuge, though not from the elements. The same man who had hurt her before in ways she couldn’t understand was getting closer. The girl spotted movement in one of the houses. A woman was inside, cheerful watering the dozen or so plants that hung at her window. The small fists banged on the door, “Let me in…Help me, PLEEEEASE!” Getting no reply, she ran to the window, frantically motioning for the woman’s attention. Seemingly oblivious to the sobbing child’s face pressed outside the glass, the woman continued humming to herself.

With nowhere else to go, the little girl tried to hide, willing herself to be invisible, hoping the danger would pass if she stayed quiet and still. But as she crouched in her makeshift refuge, the man was beside her, hovering, reaching down…

My mother wouldn’t tolerate anything that was disturbing. If her peace was threatened, she had a way of locking it out with something stronger and colder than bars and gates. Over the years, I made several attempts to ask for help, for protection, for comfort, for guidance from my mom. I told her things that would have unsettled her if she’d actually heard me. She either walked out of the room or if she stayed, she remained unmoved, vacant. She loved her peace.

I wanted peace too. I wanted to be able to sleep securely in my bed instead of being violated by my dad before the sun came up. I wanted relief from my role as a sexual toy to my father and his friends. I wanted freedom from the vague but constant feeling of being hunted. But my mom wanted peace, so there wasn’t any peace for me.

I pursued peace all of my life and I thought I knew the way to get it. Surviving the abusive system meant that I learned “my place”. I believed that placating abusers was the way to achieve peace. There were rules to follow and as long as I was “good”, I’d be safe: Keep quiet; don’t expect better; don’t question anything; don’t resist. Conflict was life threatening and there was no standing against it. Abusers always win, which meant more punishment if I didn’t cooperate. I adapted by becoming very sensitive to other people’s moods so I could fix them before something bad happened. It’s no wonder I grew up a people pleaser.

Like my mother, I learned to keep my head down and keep the peace. I didn’t question the rightness or wrongness of that system—I just accepted it. I tried to live in peace by being peaceful, but that didn’t work. I was victimized more, not less. There was no pleasing abusers. In all my efforts, in all my experience with a lifetime of abusers, not one of them ever stopped hurting me because I finally “won them over” by being good enough. Whatever I did, they always found ways to criticize me so they could punish me with more abuse. I wanted peace, but they wanted power.

Believing I lacked any ability to impact my environment, the only “safe space” was the false safety I created within my head. I dismissed potential danger; I ignored possible threats. My mantra was “It will be okay”. For all my efforts, peace eluded me.

Escaping into my head was the only place I could go when I was a child. But the abuse and the abusers were in my head too, manifested through the lies I believed about myself. To really have peace, I had to fight. I had to wrestle with the truth within myself.

The truth is that I’m not a child anymore, whose only hope of survival is to gain acceptance. I’m a capable adult and I won’t die if I oppose someone. Their displeasure won’t kill me and their rejection won’t harm me. I don’t have to go along with things I don’t like and I don’t have to be quiet. When I stopped fearing the consequences of conflict, I learned to oppose abuse.

Years ago, I thought the most frightening thing in the world would be to stand up to abusers. But the willingness to stand toe to toe with an abuser isn’t where I needed the most courage. I showed the most courage when I started to stand up to the lies within me—when I began to challenge the false messages I learned from the abuse. When I was finally able to confront what really happened to me and really understood the truth, confronting abuse outside of me became much less difficult.

The old role of “peacekeeper” sometimes tries to pull me back in. In a moment of panic, I feel like the same little girl who had no impact, whose only defense was to submit and hope “it” wouldn’t be too bad. But I’m not that helpless, frightened little girl anymore.

When abusers go unchallenged, when victims go unheard, there is no peace. I’ve declared war on the abusive systems of the world. As I’ve stood for the truth, truth has caused conflict in my relationship with others, but I don’t try to control that anymore. I don’t need others to affirm the truth for me to believe it. I don’t have to have “peace” with others to have peace within myself. Yes, I’ve made some enemies but I can finally sleep peacefully.

[read Christina's story here]

What If My Family Rejects Me? Part 2

osa — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:12:19 +0000

by Christina Enevoldsen & Bethany Ruck

My daughter, Bethany, and I were both sexually abused by our fathers and were strongly opposed by our family when we dared to seek justice for her abuse. We’re sharing how we came to terms with our grief and how we learned to meet our needs apart from our family.

Christina: I lost my family in stages. There was the time I divorced my abusive husband and my parents took his side. They rejected me for awhile, but when my ex-husband got engaged right away and they saw how happy he was, they forgave me. A few years later, I confronted my mom about her years of lying to me and her defense was that since nobody’s perfect, my standards were too high. She also reminded me that I was commanded by God to honor her. We parted ways then. The last and final time I lost my family was about a year later when Bethany and I reported her father (my ex-husband) for sexual abuse. My parents attacked Bethany and defended her perpetrator-father. Until then, I still had some hope for reconciliation.

Bethany: When I first began the journey of reporting my father, I expected to make some enemies, but little did I know just how many were to be made. After my father’s arrest, the majority of my family rallied against me. They defended an unrepentant and unremorseful child molester. They attacked and persecuted me for finally standing up to my abuser. That came as a shock. Aren’t family members the ones who are supposed to love you unconditionally? Yet their love was based on agreeing with what I did.

The biggest blow was the betrayal from my grandparents (on my mom’s side). They accused me of destroying the family, yet failed to see how much destruction the secret caused in the first place. My grandma told me I was wicked – a term she doesn’t use lightly. And when I thought it couldn’t get any more painful they attempted to bribe me in exchange for me dropping charges. They tried to reduce my pain to something some unmarked bills could fix. I was the one victimized and they were making my abuser and themselves out to be the victims. It was confusing. I did something right, I stood up to my abuser, but my family treated me like I was wrong.

I was never in touch with the fact that my father’s abuse was a statement that said, “You’re unimportant, worthless and unloved,” until the sting of extreme and vocal rejection from my grandparents. Then I became aware of just how badly he rejected me as well. My dad’s pleasure always came before my needs. In this, the rest of the family was doing the same thing.

The amount of pain I felt was overwhelming. I began to see the people I’d known all my life for who they really are and realized that the family I held in such high esteem was just a facade.

Christina: I hadn’t had contact with my parents for nearly a year prior to the reporting incident and I felt so good to be free of them. I hadn’t realized until I broke contact how much oppressive energy I was carrying by having them in my life. It was a relief!

When they attacked Bethany so cruelly, I felt like I really saw them for the first time—my real parents, not the ones I imagined I had. I was outraged. All those years, I assumed my dad was sorry for abusing me, yet his reaction showed who he identified with— an abuser. He wasn’t sorry for what he did to me and it was like he was abusing me all over again.

I was finally angry at my dad for abusing me. I spent many months processing my anger. I expressed it by beating my mattress, yelling into my pillow, talking it out and writing about it. I wrote him a letter and poured out all my feelings on the paper. It was a relief to unload it and let the paper carry the rage. I spent my whole life being overpowered by him, just taking it. It felt good to finally be opposing him.

Bethany: I was always afraid to express my anger and didn’t know how to share it in a healthy way. I was afraid of losing relationships if I showed disappointment or unhappiness in anyway. I was too emotionally dependent on my family to risk that. The first time I remember allowing myself to feel angry was after I reported my dad. I hated that I had to suffer yet again for his issues. I wished that he would have done the right thing and turned himself in instead of dragging me through the court system. It was one more time he was failing me as a father.

A few months later, anger toward my grandparents surfaced. I put my feelings in a letter and sent it to them. I was finally able to confront the people who abused me and I wasn’t afraid of their reactions.

Christina: Facing the truth about my parents brought up memories from my childhood abuse. I wasn’t only grieving the loss of my parents, but I was mourning for what I never had in them. The pain of the current rejection opened the door to the original abandonment and abuse—that very first time I lost my family. The emotions from the past and present were mixing together. Sorting out all my feelings was like untangling a huge knot.

Bethany: When I had bouts of emotion, I stopped to examine why I was feeling that way. Some of the emotions had clearer roots than others, but understanding what triggered them helped me to come to terms with what had happened. I picked apart the reasons why I was experiencing it until I gained clarity.

Christina: On most levels, I accepted that I would likely never have a relationship with my parents, especially my mom. But on another level, it was hard to give up hope that she’d eventually come to her senses. In reality, I could never trust her again. Why would I ever want to settle for a relationship with someone who values me so little? Yet there was this little girl’s voice inside me pleading, “Mommy, please love me!”

But it was a complete fantasy because what I wanted wasn’t possible. I still had a hole in my soul that longed to be nurtured. That’s what I had to work on–nurturing myself so I could finally let go of my fantasies.

I’m re-parenting myself. To do that, I’ve had to address my inner child—the part of me still longing for a family. Taking care of my inner child has been one of the most challenging parts of my restoration. I had conversations with her in an effort to sort out my thoughts and feelings. At first, I’d imagine myself talking with her, but disgust and hatred filled me. I didn’t want to protect her; I only wanted to destroy her. It was surprising to see the intensity of my self-hate.

In my mind, it was her fault that all of this happened. It was her weakness and smallness and vulnerability that caused the abuse. Removing the blame from her and forgiving her allowed me to get closer, but I also realized that my feelings toward her reflected the way my mother felt about me. Once I realized that, I got angry that this little girl was treated so unjustly. I felt compassion for her and wanted to care for her myself.

Now, I pay attention to what she’s afraid of and comfort her. I listen to what is important to her and give her a voice. I give her the gentle treatment she never got. As I’ve taken better care of her, I’ve been able to take better care of myself. As my feelings toward her have become more loving, so have my feelings toward my adult-self. I’ve learned to give myself the love I never had.

Bethany: The separation from my family made me take a closer look at the people left in my life and people I meet now. Do they treat me well? Do they validate my true self? Are they growing toward emotional health? Are they supportive of my healing process?

Where do they fit in my life? I’ve had to learn to set appropriate boundaries for each person. When I make new friends I don’t allow everyone to have a deep place in my heart. I can’t share intimate feelings with everyone. I remind myself that there’s not some grand race to make everyone my best friend. Now, I get to know each person better than I would have before and take time to examine their intentions and qualifications before allowing them to get closer to me.

Christina: When I lost my parents, I was aware that I might have a tendency to fill the void with other people who might not be very healthy. I knew I had to go through the grieving process instead of using other relationships to cover my pain. I made new friends, but I was careful not to put unrealistic expectations on them by putting them in parenting role or any other role that would give me a ‘fix’. The more I healed and learned to meet my own needs, the more I was able to allow my relationships to develop naturally.

Now I’m surrounded by my Family-of-Choice. Most of my friends have been wonderfully supportive, even if they don’t quite understand it all. I communicate my needs to the friends who want to support my healing process. For examples of specific needs, “How To Support A Survivor of Sexual Abuse”.

I’m very aware of the environment I create during this season, especially in my relationships. I choose to stay away from anyone who pressures me to perform for them. I’m discovering the real me for the first time in my life and I can’t be bothered with those who don’t appreciate that. But I’ve also noticed that as I leave one unhealthy friendship behind, I gain a healthier one.

Bethany: I used to feel defeated by my family’s betrayal and wanted to throw in the towel. But the same hurt that kept me down also helped me to realize how much I needed to press on. I couldn’t live in pain like that for the rest of my life. I became determined to live a life without my family’s blinders on and without their constant rejections. I feel more of an individual. I no longer controlled by their beliefs about me or what they say.

Christina: Leaving my family was painful, butI’ve still had to work through my pain, but the pain of leaving was so much easier than the continual pain of remaining with them. This way, the pain is dissipating instead of perpetuating. I wish I would have seen sooner all the damage those unhealthy family relationships were causing, but I’m thankful to see the truth now. I’m proud of the progress I’ve made by finally taking a stand for myself.

Through my parents, I received the gift of life. Only by leaving them did I begin to fully appreciate and develop that gift.

Bethany Ruck is cofounder of Overcoming Sexual Abuse, an online resource for male and female abuse survivors looking for practical answers and tools for healing. Besides helping abuse survivors see the beauty within themselves, she enhances the beauty of others as a professional make-up artist and has worked in television, film and print.

Does this resonate with you? Please join in by leaving your thoughts and feelings about this topic and don’t forget to subscribe to the comments.

What If My Family Rejects Me? Part 1

osa — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 14:55:29 +0000

by Christina Enevoldsen, Chris Kuhn & Ron Schulz

Many survivors of childhood sexual abuse believe their family to be supportive and nurturing—until they talk about their abuse. They are surprised to be rejected, ignored, ostracized or even threatened with violence. Ron Schulz, Chris Kuhn and I (Christina Enevoldsen) discussed how we managed our feelings and boundaries after facing family rejection.

Christina: My father sexually abused me and traded me to other men. I repressed the memories for many years, but when I remembered the abuse and disclosed it, my mom pretended it didn’t happen and my father denied it. I was used to adjusting my behavior so nobody felt uncomfortable, so I accepted that we would pretend it never happened. We lived in superficial peace.

Many years later, my adult daughter reported her father (their former son-in-law, my ex-husband) for sexual abuse and everything changed. My mom called Bethany wicked and accused her of destroying the family. My dad justified the abuse by saying, “Bethany isn’t perfect—she’s shacking up with a guy.” They threatened her and offered her a bribe to stay quiet. That opened my eyes and I saw how much of an abuser my dad still was and how much my mother protected him. My daughter and I decided not to expose ourselves to any more abuse and cut off contact with them once they refused to acknowledge any wrong-doing.

Ron: Somewhere around the age of twelve, I was sexually initiated by my older brother. His abuse continued until he graduated high school and went off to college. When I turned twenty-one, my brother died in his apartment mysteriously from a cerebral hemorrhage. After he died, I exposed him, reporting his predatory behavior to the family, however, my family was not pleased. I was ostracized, and later, one of my brothers (who later it would be revealed was also abused) threatened me with violence if I did not stop talking about it.

Chris: My abuser was the adult son of my mom’s best friend, who also happened to be my piano teacher. The teacher’s house was supposed to be a place of safety, but her son routinely waylaid me on my way out after each lesson. The interactions escalated through the course of my tenth year. Toward the end of this period he felt comfortable enough to abuse me in my own home, too. Eight years later I told my mother all about it. At that point I was eighteen and she was somewhere in her forties. She denied that what I was telling her could possibly have happened. “No, Chris. That couldn’t have happened,” were her exact words. It would be another six years till we spoke about it again, briefly. To this day, twenty-eight years later, although I know she’s horrified, she hasn’t asked for any details at all. I love my mother, but this constitutes a painful gap in our relationship.

Christina: It’s very common for families to reject rather than support the survivor. Sometimes parents reject the possibility that their child was abused because to accept the truth is too painful. Sometimes the disclosure brings up pain from their own abuse. They might also feel threatened—viewing it as an accusation that they aren’t good parents for failing to protect their child.

Many victims of sexual abuse are abused by family members. In that case, there may be divided loyalties. The survivor’s family may resist the truth because they don’t want to choose sides. The effect is that they do choose sides—the abuser’s.

In incest families the family system has a culture that protects itself by keeping the secret. They will sacrifice one member for the sake of the system. The person who wants change is often viewed as the enemy.

Ron: I think it is of merit to note the distinct advantages and disadvantages between survivors being raised in non-incestuous and those raised in incestuous ones. Since I belong to the latter class, I can say that one of the hallmarks of type is refusal to validate and foster the health state of the emotional lives of its members, with disastrous results.

Because the incestuous family system is so mired in its own shame, it does not even recognize that its members’ emotional needs exist, and so as a result the subjects of these systems are strangled emotionally at a very young age, and never given the opportunity to learn within its aegis how to defend themselves against offensive behaviors mounted against them. I know this was the case for me, and how it contributed to my own deep seated self-loathing, which I carried with me for many, many years, even into recovery.

Chris: At the time of my mom’s denial, her hurtful response helped to “jail” me. There’s no doubt I’m only liberating myself now, decades later. But what is even clearer is that the door out of this so-called jail is not the same one I came in through. The architecture of the whole building has changed. I cannot leave via some new response from my mom, the response I hoped she’d have given back then. Who knows why she reacted that way. I cannot judge her, even though there are still times that I’m angry that she didn’t (want to) believe me.

Christina: We can’t always know why our family fails to believe, comfort, and support us. Even knowing why doesn’t really solve anything. They can’t undo the harm that was done to us. With or without our family’s support, it’s still up to us to heal.

Chris: I told my brother about my abuse a few months ago. For thirty years he’d had no idea. He was shocked, of course, stunned. Then he said, innocently, “Well, when you’re all better, we can talk about it some more.” It’s very easy, as a survivor, to get mad and feel hurt in such situations. It’s all too easy, in fact, to misread his concern and discomfort about what happened to me as a rejection of me. The real message, though, is that he cares and that he is fearful of saying the wrong thing (thereby immediately saying the wrong thing).

I’m not suggesting it’s like this in all families or all conversations. Surely many if not most families really do shun surviving members, and that is never the survivor’s fault and it’s often a tragedy. But there is room for us survivors to look at and to be conscious of how we receive communication from our families and to ask ourselves about the intention of our mostly-ignorant interlocutors rather than fixate on what actually comes out of their mouths. Words are spoken and then they are heard. The same is true of silence.

Christina: Our family may blatantly reject us in a way that is abusive, but sometimes the rejection is out of insensitivity, fear, and ignorance. They may cause us pain, though they don’t intend to. In the early stages of healing we are very sensitive to other’s reactions. Because we haven’t developed the security in ourselves yet, so much weight is put upon others to respond ‘correctly’. If they don’t provide the response we need, we feel rejected.

When we’re in so much pain, it’s often difficult to remember that others have needs, too. People are their own persons, though we sometimes reduce them merely to the role they play in our lives—or rather the role we want them to play in our lives. That doesn’t make them the enemy for protecting themselves. And it doesn’t make them bad people.

Chris: To some extent I did become my brother’s enemy when I told him about what happened to me. I took his conception of the world and our childhood and shattered it. I transferred some of my burden onto him. I brought my abuse out and said now you have to help me carry this. That’s not my fault. It isn’t his either. It’s life. It is difficult. I can know these things and not be ashamed of them.

But, as we talk about the children in our surviving adult personas—as we try to liberate ourselves from the repressive jails our families built for us—perhaps we ought to think also about the children in the adult personas of those whom we are now asking to help us and suffer with us. It’s delusional to think our inner kids are repressed but theirs are free. They are not. Other experiences have made their inner children captive also. Different reasons, different degrees.

Ron: I’ve found it very beneficial to my own health to not raise myself up by tearing others down. I no longer have a need to do that, and in that regard, I am back at the wheel.

Christina: Ron, that’s a great point. When we get hurt, we have a tendency to judge the other person’s actions as wrong. But we don’t have to label them “bad” to justify setting boundaries. If we have a family member who is hurts us, however innocently, we still have ‘permission’ to withdraw. Sometimes we don’t feel comfortable walking away from a family member or family system unless we can ‘prove’ how offensive they are. Yet the truth is, we can walk away at any time. As you said, we are at the wheel.

It’s difficult to evaluate a situation while we’re in pain, so backing off is needed to see the truth. Those boundaries provide us with a sense of our own control and safety while we assess our feelings and find clarity. Healing is extremely difficult without that. Often, it’s an old wound we are reacting to and we will continue to be sensitive until the original pain is healed. Boundaries enable us to do that.

Learning those boundaries in my own life has helped me recognize other’s boundaries. Just as I can choose to separate from them even if they haven’t done anything wrong, they can do the same with me.

I have friends who have responded to my disclosure by backing off. There’s something about my information that feels threatening to them and withdrawal is a natural response. I don’t take it personally; I recognize it as self-protection. I completely support that, the same way I support my need to withdraw from any real or perceived harm.

Chris: The simplification of a world into us and them, into survivors and non-survivors, into perps and victims, makes me uncomfortable. Life is not static like that. When we pretend it is, I feel we’re really saying we’re done living, done fighting, done surviving. At that point, all we really want to do is fondle simple answers and gloat about how good it feels—we pretend, in other words, to alleviate our pain. But it seems to me more like a rejection of our pain, which is different…and not a viable survivor strategy.

Christina: I agree. That view of “us and them” is useful when we’re in survival mode, but as we regain our personal power, we don’t have that same need for such black and white thinking. Yet in the early stages of healing, it’s a very useful tool. In survival mode, we are in constant fear. Everything and everyone is a potential threat. I think it’s very helpful to set boundaries very high and very far out, to the point that it may seem unreasonable to others. However, it’s not healthy to live there.

As I worked through my anger, I got to the place where I didn’t see my abusers as all bad anymore. I was able to see the good qualities without losing sight of the bad ones. That’s when it got really painful. The anger protected me in some ways from acknowledging the pain. It created a useful boundary that helped me for a time until I was ready to go on to the next stage in healing.

Just because I recognized good qualities in my abusive parents didn’t mean I reconciled with them—I’m not hopeful that reconciliation will happen. But stepping back allowed me so see things clearly, which affirmed my decision to separate.

Ron: Until I resolved the anger and resentment that accumulated through years of reinforced shame I was destined to repeat the cycle of self-blame for failing to yield to their demands that I not ‘rock the boat’. One day, though, I realized that I could never honor that request, and it dawned on me that I had a choice: that I could remain affiliated and continue their denial and refusal to address the issues, thus remain complicit in their attempt to suffocate me by degrees, or I could step away and salvage whatever was left of my life.

I am not saying that I have ruled out the possibility of future interactions, but for now, I cannot condone their need to avoid the pain of growth, and so I have chosen to remove myself from the situation for now.

Chris: Ron, “It dawned on me that I had a choice”: your words are pivotal. I sometimes wish we had a different name for “survivor”—maybe “chooser”?—something that tips the balance of this chapter in our lives always forward. Each situation requires ongoing choices from us, different responses at different times and so on. The common thread is this idea that we are back at the wheel.

Christina: Yes, the bottom line is that we have a choice. We aren’t those vulnerable children anymore, dependent upon others for survival. We don’t have to continue to allow our relationships to be defined by others. We can choose what type of relationship to have with family members and if they don’t want the same thing, we can opt out. We don’t have to label them “bad” to separate from them and if we choose to separate that doesn’t make us bad. Our abuse invalidated our power to choose, but recovery includes taking back that power.

Does this resonate with you? Please join in by leaving your thoughts and feelings about this topic and don’t forget to subscribe to the comments.