Trust

Trust is a big issue for survivors of abuse. We all start by developing trust
in our parents or caregivers as helpless infants. We are fed and kept warm and dry. Not only that we connect with our caregivers. We often hear of the importance of eye contact especially while the child is feeding. These needs are met or a basic mistrust develops. In extreme cases we hear of the “failure to thrive”. This has happened in orphanages in third world countries when the infant or child has little human contact even though they are well fed and sheltered. Other stages of development have their trust challenges as well.
www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/erickson.shtml

When trust is violated, we respond. As adults we have an emotional reaction and we have a rush of thoughts as well. We feel frustrated, angry, and disappointed. We feel upset with ourselves for trusting and angry with the person who broke the trust. Children are violated by adults, people in a position of authority that they often depend on. It is certainly confusing and produces fear. This usually is overwhelming and the anger is downplayed or suppressed. That violation affects relationships for years to come.
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/trust_building/?nid=1210

Trust issues with others in different kinds of relationships are affected. I hesitate in my relationships because I’m not sure how trustworthy a person is. I distance myself even from good friends when I need to reach out. I calculate the risk of talking about my issues. Will someone even want to spend time with me if they think I am damaged? Will I get hurt again?

Trust for God is affected as well. Survivors ask God why, where was He and often reject God and religion. I still have problems trusting God. I grew up in an evangelical church and knew Jesus as my savior. So there is the conflict, having a relationship with God and yet having the biggest questions about His trustworthiness. The unique thing about Christ is that He can come into our memories of the abuse and take on the offense. Prayer for the specific memories and healing of emotions brings the supernatural power of God into the picture. This is the healing Jesus offers. It is spiritual but affects the emotions and memories. This doesn’t mean there is no need for professional help. It enhances counseling and touches the spiritual part of our being.

As for me, my trust in God is growing. I have made decisions to follow what he has asked me to do. Sometimes I have avoided those decisions. I have worried about my finances a lot through this. I was unable to work full-time for a lot of my adult life until recently. I had difficulty making ends meet. But looking back, God provided for me. He provided jobs, public assistance, and help through the generosity of family and friends. I didn’t need to worry about it, but I often did. I grew to trust him more for my physical needs as He met all my financial challenges. When God challenges me to move into a new area of healing, I don’t always respond right away. I hesitate. I have to think it through in my mind instead of seeking what He wants in my spirit. It’s that mistrust. I’m still learning to listen to God’s voice and trust Him more in my life.

Search of myself

Today in my 12-step group we took a look at step 4. “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves”. Now what exactly is that? It involves taking an honest look at myself, knowing myself and listing those qualities good and bad. First, make a list of strengths and positive qualities. For me, I know I am a compassionate person. I care about the struggles other people are going through. I like to support ways of alleviating people’s problems, like volunteering for a free lunch program or tutoring an inner city child. I am a thoughtful person. I do not do or say something off the top of my head very often.

There’s also the other part of the list, the one of my deficient qualities. This is where that honesty part becomes important. We tend to not be quite so honest with our weaknesses. This is something I will have to spend some time on and really pray for God to bring these things to mind. I feel what I have been dealing with lately, the anger and hurts in my past, fit into this category.

That’s my short list. This process takes longer than a couple hours. I plan on praying and asking God to bring things to me for my inventory.

One individual in the group did this step previously and found that he tended to be passive. He often let people take advantage of him and did not express his opinion on things. He took an assertiveness class and became comfortable with setting boundaries and expressing himself. So it’s not just about making the list, it’s about dealing with the weaknesses and embracing our strengths.

For the sake of review, the first three steps are:

1. We admitted we were powerless over our past and that our lives had become

unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to

sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understood

Him.

Dealing with past hurts

In the past few weeks I’ve been looking closely at my anger and what it traces back to. Sometimes I can identify events and people at the root of what I am angry about at a certain time. I remember feeling more hurt at the time than angry. I never really got to the point of feeling angry. I would feel “frustrated” or “bewildered”, but not what I called angry. Of course frustration is anger. That’s what I have to pay attention to now so I don’t drag my anger out five, ten, thirty years. So what do I do when I discover I’m still angry about an event? Sometimes it’s something I rarely think about. If I’m not thinking about it then I really don’t realize how angry I am, until I have an anger fit triggered while I do think about it. I realized if I was that angry, I needed to forgive someone. So that’s what I have started doing. Granted, those people may not deserve forgiveness, but it is about my health, not them. Even if I weren’t trying to follow God, forgiving would be in my best interest. God says in scripture to forgive those we hold something against, even to the point He won’t forgive us if we don’t. Kinda scary in a way although I know God will bring to mind anything I need to forgive, like He’s doing now. I am seeking to resolve the anger issue and I’ve asked God to help me. He’s honoring my request because I am trying to follow scripture to forgive. Many people don’t realize they hurt themselves by not forgiving. I hope that I can grow closer to the Father and Jesus as I follow the word of God.

Forgiving doesn’t mean no more anger. It means we are letting go of that event and person’s hold on our mind and emotions. For me it means offering that person up to Christ to do with what He would do. Forgiving these past hurts by people is a process. I have to forgive today and maybe I find that tomorrow I’ve taken it back up so I have to forgive again. But each time I let go more and more. Small things like if someone cuts in front of me real close going down the road is simple. It happens, I am angry, I let it go. It’s not that significant. But betrayal, verbal abuse, any abuse etc. Those can really go deep and take some time to deal with.

Some other things I have done to deal with past hurts is to journal, draw, write poetry, do picture journaling, and talk to someone about it. I have my therapist and my pastor to talk to. I attend a 12-step group where I can talk about some of my issues. I had the two ladies who prayed with me for a number of years. I guess I just scratched the surface of what I have done to actively deal with the hurts in my past. I’ve had to do them multiple times in order to progress to this point in my healing journey. I certainly wouldn’t have made it this far if I hadn’t started to forgive. I hope I can keep doing this. Often I start something and lose steam fast and it goes by the wayside. I can only hope and ask God to keep reminding me.

Managing Stress

Ever have a stressful day where you couldn’t walk away from what was stressing you out? I had a day like that today. I was the only one working today so it was all up to me. Never mind this is the first time I’ve worked this shift alone. I couldn’t get some instruments to pass QC (quality control) no matter what I tried. Fortunately we have two of those instruments so it should work on the other one. Nope. Didn’t work on that one either. Time to scream and pull my hair out. I was crying several different times during the day and had a couple of my ‘anger fits”. I called a co-worker who was familiar with this instrument and another one I had trouble with. She told me to make up new reagents, new quality control solution etc. and try it again one at a time. Still didn’t work. Then I had two tests to do on one small analyzer we have so I had to QC it but just for those two tests. I ended up crashing the probe. It’s the little robotic arm that comes down and sucks the patient’s serum up out of the tube. Well, I ordered the QC in the wrong position on the rack. That meant that the lid was on that solution because I didn’t need it but the probe came down and there was the lid, sooooooo crash! I just about sat on the floor and went into the fetal position. I looked in the operation manual to find out how to take the probe off, but I was so stressed I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. I left a note for the morning person. Fortunately the tests weren’t crucial.

So now that I am home and trying to destress, I am thinking what could I have done better. I did make some decisions that were difficult. I had gotten to a point where I was having difficulty thinking. I stuck with it. So that was good. I did call and get some help over the phone, which was good too. I let the lab operations manager know about the QC problem and she told me what to do with the tests that needed to be run today. So I did work it out. But the crying and anger fits, I sure don’t need to do that. Kinda dramatic even though no one else was around. I know I tend to cry when I get overwhelmed. I guess I feel helpless at those times. It doesn’t happen at work too often. So how do I not get overly emotional when I am in these situations? I’m not really sure. I know sometimes I feel these things but I keep on working and doing what I am supposed to be doing. It doesn’t totally interfere with my functioning. I sure approached that limit today. I guess I need to talk to my therapist about it. I’ll write about it again when I have a clue.

"It's Not What Happened To You...

... it’s what you do with what happened.”
I spotted this in my Christians in Recovery meeting room. It is certainly true. For the first 30 years of my life I didn’t know what to do with “it”. I didn’t even know what “it” was. I’ve certainly come a long way.

Growing up I did not feel like I quite fit in. Something was “wrong”. I didn’t know what. 
 I had suppressed the memories and emotions and became depressed. As I got older I was desperate to feel better. What I was doing with what happened to me was hurting me, but I didn’t realize it. I didn’t know what happened. As I started to remember, I had more control over how I handled those events, however I didn’t know that I could handle it differently. Even if I did know, I didn’t have any idea of how to handle it differently. I had to learn. Someone had to teach me. That’s what the two ladies at church did. 

They affirmed me every week. They encouraged me to journal and draw. Often I would journal a prayer or a response to scripture I had read. Sometimes I was desperate or angry or fearful and I wrote about those emotions. I had a real need to be nurtured. They did some of that too. However, being an adult and these faithful ladies weren’t my mother, I had to have that need met another way. We prayed that Jesus would send a female angel (if there was such a thing) and hold me, in my imagination. We prayed that Jesus would give me the sense of being nurtured and held. It wasn’t quite the same as being held by a real person, but it helped meet some of those longings.

 

Because of the spiritual effects of the abuse I really didn’t trust God, I didn’t want to fully give myself over to Him. I wanted control, but since I had pretty much kept the control all along, it was going to be difficult. In trying to control my life, I messed up quite a bit. I had difficulty holding down a job and I was depressed and often suicidal. I needed healing from Jesus in order to become a more functional person and to fully overcome my past. I went up for prayer almost every Sunday after the service and went to healing services. Over time, I began to wake up, have hope and handle anxiety and fear better.

I still deal with the anger, fear, depression and anxiety but a lot less than years ago. I am responsible for seeking the help I need, establishing good self-care habits, and working on those residual effects of the abuse. I don’t let those things make me dysfunctional at work or in my relationships. I’ll have to put down in black and white the things I’ve learned and how I handle some of the things I’m still working on. Just more material for my “pen”. 

Anger...what to do with it

Anger. That yucko emotion I could do without, at least the way I experience it. I don’t usually have much anger when something happens to me. But it must simmer inside because at a much later time I will think of it and all of a sudden have what I call an anger fit. I never have them with other people around, came close a few times. Usually when other people are around I am engaged with them and not thinking about those things. Sometimes I have them if I see something on TV that is unfair. It seems to have something to do with something not being fair. Not a little thing, something significant. I have had them even if I imagine something that hasn’t really happened that is unfair.


I lost a job a year and half ago because my manager thought I was going to do something she had said not to do. But I wasn’t going to do it. It was what she thought, not based on fact. I had been upset at the time, however I never really thought a lot about it. Yesterday I was thinking about it and I went into a full-blown anger fit. I prayed and forgave her and asked God to forgive me. But when I was writing an email to my therapist about it, I had another anger fit, less intense though. 

In the middle of writing this, I had a discussion with a friend about what happened. She said with my history of abuse, there probably was a lot of emotions, including anger, stirring around inside. I tend to feel anger at vulnerable times, not necessarily when an event happens. I tend to feel this anger as rage, not just anger. I guess I call anger feeling perturbed, frustrated, annoyed or something along that line. I wonder if I really have forgiven my former manager. My friend explained if the anger had been inside for so long, then the unforgiveness could be lurking inside as well.

It’s not that anger is wrong, quite the opposite. But internalizing it, allowing it to come out as rage, that is wrong. The forgiveness is necessary. Otherwise the anger continues to stir around inside and turn into rage. It doesn’t mean the person who hurt me didn’t do anything wrong or that I would allow them to do it again. Forgiving them is more about me than them. It frees me from anger and rage. 

I can let go and not let the anger and rage control me. It would be like allowing the offender to control me if I did not forgive. That’s the last thing I want.

I think that God is using this dysfunctional process of mine to bring things up that I need to deal with. I did forgive, but it doesn’t seem to be finished. So I need to keep forgiving. I need to keep asking for forgiveness when I have one of these episodes. I have to reach out to Jesus when I have one. He understands my pain. He was unjustly accused and died. He suffered more than a lost job. So I think he understands.

A New Beginning

The most significant part of my healing began when I contacted a church that had been recommended to me for prayer counseling. My therapist had suggested it. She got married and moved away from the area so I needed to find another therapist as well. Whether its called prayer counseling or healing prayer, it had a significant impact on my life. I had filled out the survey, which had questions about involvement in spiritual groups, the occult etc. There were also questions about childhood, family, illnesses etc. At this point I had no memory of my father actually doing anything to me, just the memory of my grandfather, and a few with no person I could identify.

I met with two ladies in a Sunday school classroom. I came pretty desperate for a way out of the depression I constantly felt. I wasn’t afraid to talk here. They weren’t going to put me in the hospital for being crazy. If they didn’t want me, if they thought I was beyond their help, they would tell me and I could say, at least I tried. But that didn’t happen. They prayed and asked the Holy Spirit to guide us and be present. They asked about the questions I answered on the survey about the abuse. I told them. I became very agitated and was upset. They didn’t seem too fazed by it. I dissociated and became like a young child. (so I was told) They talked to me, as a child, and comforted me. They prayed that the Holy Spirit would cleanse me of the abuse, the shame, fear and anxiety. They used water as a symbol of the cleansing. (it was holy water) I went away feeling safe, that I had found some people who believed me and weren’t about giving me another pill or putting me in the hospital or telling me my behavior was bad. I had tested them in a way, letting my feelings out and not holding back and they had passed. I still felt crazy, especially after dissociating like that. But I returned the next week and thereafter weekly. 

I continued to dissociate just about every week. The two ladies who were praying for me took it all in stride. They explained what it was and why people do it. It seemed like a release for me to allow myself to “leave”. I would still become agitated and one time I ran toward the window and tried to punch it. Someone grabbed me and just held me. I immediately calmed down. I felt safe and secure, a feeling I didn’t even know I had never had. I fell asleep there in her arms. Every week we started with prayer that the Holy Spirit would guide us and protect us. We would listen quietly for the Holy Spirit to put memories, thoughts or words in our minds and then discuss and pray about what it meant.

They gave me a lot of practical ideas of what to do when I became anxious and overwhelmed at home or at work. I had a list that I kept taped inside the cupboard door. Watch TV, turn on music, call someone on the phone, take a walk, draw, read, and I could also call one of them if I needed to.

I began to have hope because someone else believed me and believed in me. This was different, it was new, and there was light at the end of the tunnel after all.

What is Dissociation? Go to these websites for more information.


For a definition and history of the concept go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation

Definition and support of those with Dissociative Disorders:http://www.christiansurvivors.com/whatisdid.html

Definition and support:http://www.multipletreasures.org/did.html

Gratitude

The topic in my twelve-step group earlier this week was on gratitude. A friend had gone back over the past year month-by-month and noted who had been a friend, had helped her, encouraged her, taught her something etc. This gave me the idea. I thought further on it and decided that I would actually tell some people that I was grateful for them for something. Too often I don’t express my thanks and gratitude. I think it’s pretty common. When I am too focused on myself and my healing, it becomes all about me. I can become pretty negative as well. Gratitude requires some positive thinking and it also brings some focus onto others as well.

I can even be grateful to my parents for some things in my childhood. There were good things that happened, good memories. Not everyone has that, but I suspect that it can be blocked out by all the bad. It doesn’t absolve them of the wrongs committed against me, however it is true.

I think gratitude is essential for healing. It brings balance. It may not be easy especially in the early going. I know I didn’t think too much about being grateful, but I know I was... for the people who walked that early and rocky part of the journey with me.

Remembering...

I began to remember abusive incidences but not with my father. I went to a group for survivors at the local college campus. I would get flashbacks now and then and they would be traumatic but I couldn’t remember what they were about. It scared other people and of course I only had them around “safe” people. But they didn’t know what was going on and couldn’t help even though they were sympathetic. The difficulty continued. My doctor thought I had schizoaffective disorder, a diagnosis that is not in the DSM IV today. I was deeply depressed and I felt crazy with all the bits and pieces of memories floating around in my head. At one point my counselor asked my doc to give me a “vacation” from my meds. So I slowly went off them and I sure felt different. I had been pretty well dulled by the medication into not having much emotion for a number of years, so I was feeling a lot of things I hadn’t felt for years. I still felt crazy and mixed up but it was different. I had been athletic when I was younger and started being more active. It felt good and it was a good way to let out all the energy and emotion I had. I had to go back on some medication but less than before.

By my late twenties I was still living at home but was becoming more functional. I moved out during one summer and rented a room in an older lady’s home. I could cook and do laundry and watch TV if I wanted. Being out of my parents home triggered more memories of abuse and things became more connected for me. I started back to school to work on a graduate degree so I started having more problems with stress and anxiety. I was in the hospital three different times that year. I did not get my assistantship renewed.

I really prayed that God would heal me, show me what was wrong. I had been going to church all this time and some people were empathetic but they didn’t know what to do. One person told me depression was a sin because of all the negative thinking. I didn’t believe that but I knew I wasn’t going to get knowledgeable help there. I did not tell anyone that I had been sexually abused at that time. Later, I told the Assistant Pastors wife who was a trained counselor. She was someone I had gone to school with so she knew my family and me. Nothing was really said after that, I don’t think she believed me. 

At this time I was without a counselor because the last one had gotten married and moved away. She had suggested to me to go to a healing ministry at a church in town. I kinda put it off, but as I started having more problems, I decided to pursue it. I went and at the first meeting I filled out a survey. They wanted to know my personal history. They also wanted me to get permission from my pastor for the counseling. That was no problem, he was empathetic to my situation and said he wished he could help more but did not have training to do so. (I did not tell him about the sexual abuse, just the depression) He was happy to know there was a church that was equipped to do it.

This became a turning point in my life. God was answering my prayer for help. I knew I wasn’t crazy but I couldn’t prove it and I was scared to tell the things that were coming up, figuring the counselors would think I was crazy and put me back in the hospital. So God was about to enter fully into my healing. I didn’t know what I was in for, but it was going to be quite a ride.