Heal The Abuse - Recover Your Life, Jason Goodwin [ink book reader .txt] 📗

has been a sick means of recreating the feelings ofabandonment I experienced as a child. By isolating myself, I punishmyself for having been abused and perpetuate my belief that I don’tdeserve to be loved.

2. Not taking care of myself: I stop takingcare of my needs for food, sleep, exercise, or social activity. Ineglect those needs out of self-hatred, and claim that I don’t careabout myself.

3. Choosing or staying with partners whodon’t love me: I choose partners that are emotionally unavailable,disrespectful, or even abusive. This reinforces my belief that Idon’t deserve to be loved. It reinforces my low self-esteem. Evenwhen I recognize that a partner has become abusive, I still cannotbring myself to leave them.

4. Focusing on the negative aspects of life,knowing it will make me depressed: I have often focused on thenegative side of life. This has been an effort to make myself feeldepressed, and has turned into another sick form ofself-punishment.

5. Living in the past or projecting negativeoutcomes into the future: Instead of living in the present, Iruminate about all the horrible things that happened in my past. Iimagine all the ways that I will be miserable and unhappy in thefuture. This keeps me feeling hopeless and depressed.

6. Not allowing myself to have fun: I avoidfun activities and do not allow myself to appreciate hobbies,games, social activities, work, and life. I try to punish myselffor being a bad person.

7. Turning to cigarettes, alcohol, or otheraddictions: I use addictions to numb my feelings and sabotage myhealing process. I hurt my body or abuse myself because I don’tlike who I am. I don’t believe that I deserve to be healthy. When Ishut off my painful feelings with addictions, I am preventing thechanges I’m afraid of.

-What happens when I self-sabotage?

1. My self-esteem drops like a rock, becauseevery form of self-sabotage is a form of self-abuse.

2. I start to feel hopeless anddepressed.

I need to let go of my addiction to misery. Ihave used self-sabotaging behaviors to avoid feelings of anger andfear.

When I was abused, I survived by neverallowing myself to feel angry or afraid. I could not show angertowards my abusers or they would have punished me by abusing memore viciously. I could not show fear because I never wanted themto know how deeply their abuse was affecting me.

I do not need to suppress my feelings ofanger or fear anymore. If I’m afraid, I can sit and shake. If I’mangry, I can yell when I’m alone or punch a punching bag. I willnot allow these feelings to destroy me from within. They are toxic,and they need to be released.

Process Questions

In what ways have I sabotaged myself in thepast?

How does it feel when I sabotage myself? Whatfeelings am I trying to cover up or avoid? What is the payoff formy self-destructive behavior?

How might my life improve if I were to stopsabotaging myself?

When I feel a lot of anger or fear, whatcould I do instead of sabotaging myself? (Go to a 12-step meeting,do some exercise, punch a punching bag, cry, spend time with mypet, sit with my feelings, spend time with friends, do somejournaling, talk about it, etc…)

How has self-sabotage kept me from gettingwhat I want out of life?

Stepping Stones to Health

Self-Sabotage

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

_____ 1. Whenever I start doing well in life,I sabotage myself.

_____ 2. If I feel upset or am reminded ofthe bad things that happened in my past, I sabotage myself.

_____ 3. I realize that I tend to sabotagemyself, but I don’t know how to change these self-defeatingbehaviors.

_____ 4. I don’t like it when I sabotagemyself.

_____ 5. I want to stop hurting myself andmaking myself miserable.

_____ 6. I have identified some of the ways Itend to sabotage myself.

_____ 7. I have identified some of thefeelings I experience when I sabotage myself.

_____ 8. I am exploring my feelings byjournaling, talking about them in 12-step meetings, with others inrecovery, or with my counselor.

_____ 9. I am learning that I need to feel myfeelings instead of sabotaging myself.

_____ 10. I don’t sabotage myself as much asI used to, and I am learning better ways to express myfeelings.

_____ 11. I can now identify when I’msabotaging myself and stop these self-defeating behaviors.

Chapter 10 –Body Image

“Outside show is a poor substitute for innerworth.”

-Aesop

Survivors of sexual abuse often develop adistorted body image. This pattern appears to be more common inwomen than in men. Our western culture places a great deal ofemphasis on feminine beauty. Most of the men I have spoken with donot feel this same pressure to look good.

Survivors of sexual abuse often experience alot of pain. We are upset about what happened to us and we want toknow what or who is to blame for the abuse. Some of us blame theabuser, which is the most rational and healthy approach.

Unfortunately, there are those of us whoblame ourselves. This is both detrimental to our self-esteem andoften leads to feelings of shame and guilt. In psychology, we callthis an attribution error. As survivors, we blame our owncharacteristics for what happened to us instead of thecharacteristics of an abuser.

Sometimes we imagine, “If only I hadn’tlooked at him that way, he wouldn’t have come on to me,” or, “Ifonly I had been a better son, she wouldn’t have molested me.” Butin truth, we never had that much control.

We are good people. We do not deserve to beabused. What happened to us was not our fault.

Sometimes we blame our bodies for the abuse.If we were abused as children, we may come to believe that sexualpredators are only attracted to pretty little girls or handsomelittle boys. We try to blame our appearance for the abuse.

Some adult, female survivors of childhoodsexual abuse believe they have to look like little girls to beattractive to a man. They lose weight or try to reduce the size oftheir