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

3. Do not make a long-term commitment at thispoint unless you are comfortable with the answers to thesequestions.

4. Do not make any major life changes in thisphase.

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

Phase 5 –Month 13+

1. At this point, you can make long-termcommitments if you decide to and increase your level of risk. Ifyour relationship has reached Phase 5, you have done a good job offinding balance between getting your needs met and ensuring yoursafety. It is important to ask your partner if he/she feels thathis/her needs are being met in the relationship. If not, are thereways that you can both work to fix the problems? Are you able toshow your partner that you love him/her in the way that he/shewants to be loved? (Please refer to The Five LoveLanguages by Gary Chapman for more information.) Bothpartners must feel that their needs are being met in therelationship to be happy.

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

While no plan is perfect, sticking to thisplan can help us stay with partners who are trustworthy and avoidpartners who are not. We can’t control whether a partner will befaithful. We can’t predict who will be worthy of our trust. So weneed to have a policy for relationships that increases our chancesof finding honest partners and friends. Caution is the bestdefense. A trustworthy partner will not be offended by our cautionif we are reasonable about it. In fact, they’ll probably respect usmore.

Stepping Stones to Health

Trust

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

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

_____ 2. I have been hurt by people in thepast.

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 24 –Forgiving

“Forgiveness is giving up the possibility ofa better past.”

-Mike D.

Forgiveness can be thought of as the finalstep in the healing process. Some of us have attempted to forgivetoo quickly. I believe that genuine forgiveness only happens afterwe have processed our feelings and regained our self-esteem.

The process we go through on our way toforgiving an abuser lies completely within our own hearts andminds. We cannot wait for the day our abusers will apologize forwhat they did. We cannot hold out for the day when they willfinally love us.

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

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

Some people minimize the harmful and lastingeffects of sexual abuse. They talk about what happened as if we hadskinned 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 guiltywhen we have a hard time forgiving our abusers. We berate ourselvesfor feeling so angry. We grow impatient with our own healingprocess. 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 wrongwith me? Why can’t I let go?”

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

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

Torture? Some of us endured torture not onceor twice, but over years of sexual abuse. We experiencedpsychological, emotional, physical, and sexual torture. We weredeeply traumatized and made to feel incredibly powerless.

Murder? Many of us would have preferred deathto the abuse we experienced. Some survivors give up hope and commitsuicide. Others kill themselves slowly by staying in physicallyabusive relationships or destroying their bodies with drugs andalcohol. Some survivors continue to place themselves in riskysituations by engaging in prostitution or working in the adultentertainment industry.

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

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

Healing the pain of sexual abuse