I Have Something To Say

Abuse survivors are usually wary of new relationships for extremely good reasons that are not their fault. Almost always, the cycle of abuse starts out as something that appears wonderful. The new guy or gal is interested in them. Not only interested, but infatuated. They too-quickly claim they are "the one." They study their target, quick to note all their likes and dislikes, which feels like manna from heaven for someone who has been emotionally neglected. They are quick to become intimate, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Abusers hook their victims fast, always under some romantic guise of "fate" or "true love." Just when the victim believes it's real, the trouble starts. This initial stage of love bombing is how an abuser manipulates their prey into a false attachment. Everyone needs to be seen, heard, loved, and cared for, and this is the ammunition an abuser uses to target their victims. When someone feels loved, they relax. They bond...

Healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse is a lifelong unraveling. One has to scrape through many layers of gunk made up from the minimization of abuse and misplaced, mis-formed thoughts about one's self and the world they live in. In many ways, I consider myself extremely fortunate and privileged to have escaped my abusers and be in a place where my soul can finally ask two all-important questions: Who am I, and what do I want? These are difficult questions for anyone seeking to live an authentic life, but for abuse survivors, they are especially elusive. When I was a child, at a time when I was supposed to be developing a sense of self, I wasn't allowed to have an identity separate from my abusers. I existed tin order to serve whatever their ego wanted. That was it. As I naturally fought against this role, I was labeled "rebellious," "ungrateful," and "bad" for trying to seek a separate identity. Even though I distanced myself as much a...

I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional home with a raging, alcoholic, narcissistic father. I still carry a lot of pain over the traumatic memories of his irrational outbursts and propensity to punish me for imagined slights. I struggle with an overbearing sense of responsibility and need to be blameless as a result of his abuse. But recognizing the ways he abused me and my subsequent hangups are pretty easy to identify. Though painful, my father's overt behavior is not as difficult to process as the other forms of abuse I experienced. The hardest is emotional neglect. The constant baseline in my home was not angry outbursts, it was neglect. It was the chronic, constant expectation that I would not cause any trouble or upset by having needs of any kind. If I did attempt to be seen or heard, I would be punished. My parents were experts in emotional neglect and covert abuse. As a young child, I was expected to require minimal upkeep. My physical need for food, clothing, and shel...

A couple weeks ago, my daughter had a medical emergency. I was four hours away. My husband and I had just hiked in to a remote location, eager to spend a few days in silence and contemplation. It was also much-needed chance to re-connect with each other. The last few weeks had been especially busy, and my C-PTSD brain was barely hanging on as it was. I was exhausted in every way, and this trip was the carrot I had been dangling to make it to the holiday. I knew after a few days of recharging, I would get the rest I needed. It was a healthy gift to myself and to us as a couple. I had one bar on my phone, which was enough to push the message through that our daughter was in the hospital and they planned to operate in the morning. So, we packed up, threw on some snow shoes, and hiked out in the dark. I was straining to not think about the mountain lion I encountered on my last trek in. After a driving on narrow highways full of oncoming high beams piercing my migraine, we arrived at ...

I study a lot of stories, and I am well-versed in the power of inspirational stories to uplift and entertain through shared catharsis. We can learn a lot about our own lives through storytelling. However, there is a big reason why some stories that feature characters who rise above their circumstances go down as all-time classics, and why some fall flat. It's all in how the character handles (or doesn't handle) their trauma. Take Harry Potter, for instance. After his parents died at the hands of evil, he was raised by his aunt and uncle, the epitome of ignorance, hate, abuse, and neglect. When he escapes them by going off to Hogwarts, his experience there is not exactly all happy charms and spells. He narrowly escapes one plight after another until he finally has to battle the one who killed his parents. Harry Potter works because Harry appropriately faces the trauma of his past. He doesn't succeed in spite of it, he succeeds because of it.  He is the ultimate exampl...

It seems the deeper I journey into the healing and recovery process, the more I find that much of our cultural and conventional wisdom does not help trauma survivors. All the trite platitudes and sayings that might help someone having a garden-variety bad day can actually become giant triggers for someone living with trauma. Let's assume everyone wants to live a healthy, pain-free, abundant, and productive life. There are hundreds of motivational books and centered on "fake it til you make it" principles, which encourage people to think positive, let it go, don't sweat the small stuff, etc. They may have helped some people. Judging by book sales, they have probably helped many. Yet, for many trauma survivors searching for relief, these books and motivational coaches don't help. In fact, many, like me, feel more depressed, broken, and impossibly disconnected after reading them. Here's why. Trauma survivors are often highly motivated people. Many are cond...

Recently, I wrote about the ways "It's not that bad" has kept me from owning and validating the true cost of my traumatic past. There have been times I have envied those with physical trauma because they received all the validation and support that was denied me as a survivor of psychological trauma. There are plenty of abuse survivors with far more dramatic stories than mine. Surely, we've all been in situations where someone else's story of calamity and misfortune has humbled us. Ironically, for many, holding on to the misplaced shame that their own story of abuse isn't "good enough" to be validated because more terrible things have happened to others is exactly the trap that keeps us silent and perpetuates the cycle. Acknowledging trauma is about acknowledging one's own perception. It's not something someone else can determine or validate for you. The greatest goal for an abuse survivor is to be able to own what actually happened to t...

I imagine most of my posts this week will be about processing the almost-crash we experienced, here . I've been doing my best to manage things as they come up, and I am realizing just how much extra time and space I need to allow myself right now. The tension, exhaustion, and nightmares are back. I feel like much of the progress I've made in recent months dealing with the realities of complex trauma have vanished and I'm back to where I was when I started. It feels like a setback, but I'm trying to see it as an opportunity to better understand how to better care for myself. In many ways, re-experiencing these symptoms is an indicator of growth, and I know by honoring the process, I will heal. But I also know that a big part of that healing is acknowledging where I'm at. It's not helpful to pretend to be mentally tough and pull myself together. Healing lies in acknowledging that what happened was scary, and allowing myself to feel that. My ego would so much ...

I just spent the last few days on retreat, where my family later joined me. It was some much needed self-care away from the trappings of life. Over the last several months, I've grown more aware of how necessary self-care is for someone like me facing the realities of complex trauma head on.  Speaking of head on, on the way home I had a very close call. On a twisty mountain road, I drove my daughter and two cats, while behind me, my husband followed with my other children. In the other lane, a Jeep and a truck careened toward us, side by side, vying for the same spot in their single lane. One second sooner, and the Jeep would have hit me head on. One second later, and the Jeep would have hit my husband. Instead, it slammed through the guard rail between our two cars, flipped over a boulder, and rolled down the hillside. My husband, a trained trauma nurse, was the first to reach the driver. He helped her crawl out of her overturned car, and miraculously, with my husband'...

I consider myself to be fairly self-aware and introspective. I've always been willing to look at my life and my life choices from every angle and make adjustments when necessary. And yet, there was this one area of my life that I felt, instinctively, was too big, too dark, too scary for me to face head on. I knew my parents weren't "normal" and that my childhood was lacking certain things, like, say, love. I knew enough about the dysfunction to go no contact over ten years ago. There was quite a bit I had already figured out and gained perspective on. And yet, there was this compartmentalized part of me that lurked in the shadows. I found myself thinking, fearing,  someday , I'll have to deal with that. Someday came. It came in the form of chronic illness, exhaustion, and collapse. It came in the form of feeling empty in spite of success. It came in the form of feeling responsible for burdens that weren't mine. It came in the form of nightmares. It came i...

They see themselves as good people. Conflict makes them uncomfortable. They don't want to get involved. They fear losing friends and family. They wish everyone would just get along. They are the silent complicit, and they are as toxic as the overt abusers they enable. In many ways, they are worse. They claim to be your friend. They claim to care. They are in every workplace, school, grocery store, and public place. When abuse happens right in front of their face, they fail to recognize it. They don't understand why you are upset. They make lame excuses, often in the form of platitudes. "There are two sides to every story." "Give him the benefit of the doubt." "Time heals all wounds." "Let's not jump to conclusions." "Prayer solves everything." The silent complicit would much rather believe the lie that nothing is wrong than to admit the truth. Some choose to do this out of sheer laziness. Admitting something is wron...

I consider myself a positive person who tries to look for the good in every situation. I generally believe that focusing on what I am grateful for is a healthy perspective to have. Since coming to terms with the the childhood abuse I endured, I also have a newfound respect for admitting just how terrible it is when something really, really shitty happens. Acknowledging how bad the abuse really was was a huge step for me. Previously, I had been minimizing it, and somewhat cooperating with the abuser's voice in my head that told me it didn't happen, and if it did, it wasn't that bad, and that I was being over-dramatic about it. Not wanting to sound negative to others stopped me from speaking up about abuse for too many years. So, I allowed myself to comment more about it. I brought up more details about my abuse in everyday conversation, even though many of the details were dark conversation killers. I decided that the people who love me most are the ones interested in ...

It seems like a simple thing to figure out, but it's not. in order to cope, I spent many, many years believing my abusers' lies. It wasn't that bad. Other people had it worse. There was something wrong and shameful about me, especially if I had a problem with what happened. Even though I acknowledged the facts, for most of my life, I rejected the label that I was sexually abused. It was a club I didn't want to belong to, and on subconsciously I thought that if I could minimize it enough, maybe my abusers' lies would become true. Maybe it didn't happen. One of the most profound and horrible discoveries I have experienced as a result of intensive therapy and finally dealing with it all is that yes, in fact, it really was that bad. Denial and minimization had such a grip on me, even when I thought I was being "honest" with myself. I was so used to going numb and dissociating under stress, it was my default way of living. For the first time in my lif...

Psst. I have a superpower. And maybe you do, too. There are many long term, far-reaching, negative effects that children of toxic parents endure, from physical health problems to emotional and social issues. Children of emotionally abusive parents often have the hardest recovery because it is so difficult to de-program all the negative feedback they received from their toxic parents. As adults, they must retrain their brains how to think, and it's extremely challenging for a victim of abuse to even recognize how the negative feedback they received from their abusive parent has turned into their own negative self-talk. Recovery feels counter-intuitive, because their identity is formed in lies: "I'm worthless." "I'm bad." "Nobody could love someone like me." "No one cares." "I'm a screw up." "I'm permanently damaged." "I'm hopeless." Children who live in toxic environments in which they a...

When the subject of my abusive past comes up, the surprised response I most often hear from others who have known me for a while is, "But you're so normal!" There are a lot of different ways of coping with abuse. For me, I thought I could perform and please my way out of it. I was the responsible one. I was the one who appeared to have it all together. People who knew me in high school would say things like, "But you seemed happy!" Yes, I was smiling. I was even bubbly. And I was also coping with narcissistic, emotional, sexual, and spiritual abuse. Outward behavior does not always indicate the inner life. For me, appearing to look normal and happy were necessary for survival. But it was also those coping skills that made me put off seeking a deeper level of help for my wounds. For me, admitting that what happened was not OK, that I was not OK, was extremely difficult and scary. I didn't want to admit that I was abused, because I felt that meant on so...

"It wasn't that bad." "What happened to me is nothing compared to what you're going through." "Well, at least... {insert positive thought here}" "Others have had it so much worse." "It was a long time ago." "Well, there's nothing I can do about it now." Our brains and bodies are experts at self-protection, and minimization is one way we shield ourselves from the reality of abuse. Survivors of trauma can become so good at minimizing their experience, their own self-deception becomes a core identity. Minimization leads to denial and dissociation. Dissociation can lead to split personality disorders and other forms of psychosis. There is another word for minimization. Lying. As I have confronted and come to terms with the real, long term effects of psychological and child sexual abuse in my life, I am shocked how much I minimized the impact over the years. I lied to myself that I was fine. I lied to ever...