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Leaving a Therapy Session

April 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

At the end of every therapy session I  felt disconnected, confused and vulnerable. It felt almost like I had to rebuild my inner self, and my outward persona  so that I could patch the holes that were leaking the real me into the real world, and go back to the daily gind in some semblance of order. That process started in the therapy room and extended to the reception area. It was  always daunting, stepping from memories to the real world, not sure if it would spill, not sure if I had enough control to keep it all inside. I would chat with the receptionist just to take my mind off where I had just been – long enough to get to a level of comfort.

The conversations with the receptionist became a routine, a reality check to see if I was ready to face the world. It began a routine of helping to let go of the session, sanitizing if you like, rebuilding the wall that stopped me losing control where it wasn’t welcome. I knew that from leaving the therapy room to getting to the reception area I had to regain enough composure to look somewhat normal at least, that was a good start. So much of me was out in the open when the sessions finished that I felt literally raw and disoriented. It took so much effort to put myself back together at the end of the session alone, let alone trying to get back into the daily routine.  I had to make sure I was ‘safe’ to leave the building. Much as this sounds dramatic, it was how it felt. The reality of it might not have had to be so intense, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

Leaving the therapy center without rebuilding the walls around me that protected me would have been dangerous, or so I thought, and I knew I could not afford to lose any footing at any stage of the game. Though deeply hurt, disturbed and troubled, and very confused, something burned inside me to keep me alive and I consciously and subconsciously took every available step to keep myself sane and safe. One of those steps was decompressing through a process from leaving the therapy room, to getting back to work.

The realism of moving from the therapy room to the front office was innocuous enough, after all it was just a walk up the corridor. I could never predict from session to session what I would take out of the therapy room with me. I would struggle with myself to get my mind in shape. I would literally think about raising barriers to attain the frame of mind that I needed to stay safe, all the time thinking that the receptionist shouldn’t have to see what a mess I really was. I couldn’t face her, or the world, with my barriers down.

The receptionist and I had some serious conversations; reflections on ‘us’ and our thinking; reflections on the world around us; reflections on human nature and more, and we interacted on a level where I believe both of us were learning. It was nothing untoward, nothing out of the ordinary, but so insightful; we would chat about actions, reactions and even coping mechanisms. Her train of thought would actually lead me to conclusions about my own life, and my conclusions would help her rationalize her world. In hearing and thinking through some of the subjects we chatted about my mind was receptive to both her need and mine. I would rationalize situations we were both in and actually make some sense of them, albeit in the third party. Perhaps it was a sort of debrief for me, a way to get my head back into normal mode. I came to enjoy the time I spent chatting with her. She would always have a smile and good conversation, and it became routine.

There were days when she wasn’t there.  Getting back to everyday life was then too quick and I would have to think hard before leaving. I knew that I needed to get past the reliance on that conversation – it was a methodology therefore I should be able to recreate the effecct in my mind. In reality, when all was said and done, I had to face that process alone anyway. The few times that the receptionist wasn’t around, there were lessons in how to cope with the transition from therapy to real life. Each time, with or without her, it became easier to adjust, easier to cope and control the transition. It became another part of the learning experience that I chose to turn into a lesson.

Why did I harp on about that here? It’s showing a method, a way of thinking, of building coping mechanisms and trying to make sense of the real world. It was part of the process and it had enough impact behind it to deserve a mention. It’s all a part of ‘how it was done’, for me – and it was a great sanity check for my emotional state before stepping for the quite of a therapy center to the life that awaited outside.

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Understanding Emotions

April 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

To be honest, I am not sure  I know what emotions are. I don’t understand them. I don’t suppose I ever will. It scares me to think that we have so little knowledge of how they work, how they create the deepest of sensations within us and what they are really capable of. To think that emotions can drive us to kill ourselves, or even worse – kill others, scares me incredibly, especially considering I have so little understanding of mine. I don’t see my emotions as a part of me, I see them as something that lives within me, that which I have no control over, a separate entity per say. It’s very scary to think that I have made emotions an entity within me, separate from what I consider to be my core, because I know I have empowered them somehow but I don’t know why and, as I continue on this journey I know that I have less control over them. Understanding them means I have to connect with them and that is like salt on an open wound. Each time I connect to the past I connect to emotions and that lessens the blow. It’s not easy but it is visible progress, and it’s a welcome sign that my life is moving forward. I’m learning that understanding them isn’t as important as understanding where they came from. What part of the past has triggered that reaction and how do I get around it? It’s a learning process that I need to get on board with.

As I grew through my twenties and thirties I had vague notions of emotions. I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about. I would feel some moods but if I didn’t want to feel an emotion I would switch it off. It literally was that simple for me. Conversely if I wanted to feel an emotion I would find a trigger point, a picture in my head, and create that emotion. I know that sounds strange but it’s the only way I can explain how I dealt with the real world. I was insular within my whole life. I was inside the shell of an adult not knowing how I was supposed to react, not knowing who I was supposed to be. In the inside world that I had created it was much like a child building a fantasy world around him to make sense of the darkness. Darkness to me was both literal and metaphoric. I was adept at creating worlds, one of which was the box I created to detach from my father when he used me, another was where emotions lived. Emotions belonged to the adult though, which wasn’t me – that’s how I perceived it. It seemed easier to not own them. I rationalized that if I didn’t own them then they didn’t own me, therefore had less of an effect. Who was I kidding?

There were a couple times when I knew I had no control over what I felt and those times scared me to death. I had no control over the emotion, but it had control over me. I learned to bury the feelings deeper and control them even more, not knowing that in doing that I was cutting myself off more from the real world. I understood in the instant that I felt those emotions that I could not allow them to be real. The sheer power of them would overwhelm me and something bad would happen. Whatever control I had at that point had to be rebuilt and reinforced, my temper and my sadness were not to be let out ever again. The walls I built were impenetrable. It kept them out – It kept me in, and that is probably what saved me over the years.

I know that I feel emotions now and I know that they are extremely real and extremely raw, but I also know that even at this point in the therapy they haven’t really come out fully yet. I haven’t let them go. I still don’t know how to. I am still very scared at what might happen if I do but I am also scared that I will never learn to let them just be. I am learning to love for what seems like the first time, and the range of emotions involved in that are so intense that even laughter burns my heart so very deeply. If I laugh I cry. It seems that my insides are still confused, an enigma you might think. These ‘new’ emotions feel right somehow though. I can’t explain that other than maybe it is instinct.

What I don’t know most of the time is what the emotion is, or what it means. Again, it doesn’t sound possible to not know what you are feeling but for me, that’s the way it is. I know that something inside me is trying to tell me something, and that the voice is like an ebb or flow, much like a river, but pushing me one way or another. It seems that dependent on which way the flow is moving determines which emotion I should be feeling. If you believe in having a life essence, a spirit if you will, then the ebb and flow feeling is your spirit trying to move you toward an emotion, almost guiding you to where you should be. I say that because my perception of it is that it has life. When I get out of bed in the morning I don’t know what mood I am in until someone speaks to me. Some days that could be hours, some times in the past, it was days. But in that silence was comfort. No ‘noise’ around me – the walls were thick and I was protected, safe.

Most people have learned the life skills to understand what each feeling is supposed to be. I didn’t. I made up what I felt when I needed it so now I have no real idea of what it means or even why it’s there sometimes. When these feelings jump out of nowhere and for no reason, how am I supposed to link them to reality, let alone know what they are? Even when I sit back and try to rationalize them they don’t make sense most of the time. It frustrates me and I have little patience for that learning process, yet I know I have to live the emotion to understand and integrate myself back into a whole person.

I have learned to visualize emotions more now. In reality I have been doing this all of my life but have only recently learned how to explain it. I see a picture in my head and have to almost decipher it. An example is in trying to explain what I feel to someone. I know I feel it, I know it’s there and I can now usually tell if it’s positive or negative, but I still can’t express it or make it known. Maybe it is that I have controlled emotions for so long that I don’t know how to feel them anymore. Maybe it is that these emotions are no longer pretend, no longer made up by me, and are too real. Either way I had to find a way to explain them to my therapist, as well as explain them to myself. I would explain what I saw in my head, the picture, and that would then let my therapist know what I was feeling, and she would help me put words to it. Sometimes she would tell me what I was feeling before I even had time to acknowledge it, another clue that I had no idea of what I was dealing with.

The pictures can be as simple as black and white. Seeing a simple difference would lead me to understand that the emotion would play to the situation I was in at the time. In other worlds, coupled with what I felt, the picture would help me makes sense of what it was, but not how to deal with it. It doesn’t seem to make much sense when you think of it outside of what you are feeling. You feel something, see a picture and that picture helps you explain it.

Once, in therapy, I saw a picture of two identical desert scenes. One was night time and the impression was that it was scorching hot; the other was daytime but freezing cold. I couldn’t grasp what I was seeing because it was the opposite of what I expected to see, but I knew that I was confused. Part of translating that was that I could see more of the real world and it was somewhat identical to the world I had created, just some of the important information was missing. In the images I saw it was obvious that the daytime should have been scorching hot. The other part of the association for me was that I was starting to see the reality of my life, but I still had confused some fundamental parts of it. So, with the confusion and the missing information, it took some effort to try to rationalize what it was I was seeing. The idea I took from that was that I was on the right track but still had some fundamental work to do to try to match my world to the real world. That might not sound so dramatic, but for me it was. Seeing progression, forward motion from the hell that I was in was a great sign that not only was I on the right track, but I was actually making visible progress. It also gave me another way of working out how to better understand how I felt, and to be more aware of it.

In reality I’m not sure what the real world is, or indeed that there is a real world. We each create our world according to our needs, be it a positive or negative experience. What I am aware of is that learning to embrace and understand emotions means a better grasp of what makes me tick. Giving in to an emotion is what breaks us. They are there for a reason and are usually trying to tell us something, but most of the time we miss the point. We choose how we accept emotions, disseminating them is just part of the process.

Residual Effects

I have noticed that there are still emotions and mood swings that I don’t fully understand. Maybe it’s a little unreal to say that I don’t understand, more that I don’t know how to deal with them; how powerful they are or even where they came from. Having spent most of my life telling myself how I felt, lying to myself about how I felt, it’s enough to say that perhaps these were normal but I had shut them off for so long that they don’t feel familiar. In reality I’m sure it’s part of the learning process, something that I knew I would have to go through. Now I am starting to understand the power that emotions can have over you and it’s scaring me a little. Luckily I have plenty of support around me, especially my very supportive partner.

Recently I went on vacation to Key West with my partner. During the second day of the vacation I had what I called a ‘moment’. I suddenly felt insecure, insignificant and disconnected from my partner, and from the people we were with. We had met up with a group of guys and had just had a great Cuban dinner with them. We had a great time and the conversation was flowing. It was a lot of fun to chat with mixed company and we all got on really well. After dinner we were wandering around town looking in art galleries and just generally taking in the night life. I felt more and more detached from my partner as time went by, and felt that he wasn’t interested in being with me. I pulled back from the group and tried to understand what I was thinking. Insecurity crept in, and with it came anger, resentment and jealousy too. I tried to communicate this to him but he didn’t seem to understand, but that’s not to say that he didn’t try. He thought I wasn’t being holey serious at first, and didn’t quite get the gravity of the situation. I kept trying to get him to understand but all he knew was that I was upset and that it didn’t seem to make much sense to him. He didn’t really understand why and, looking back, I can understand his confusion.

He made the decision to split from the group and head back to the hotel. He told the others we were tired and, for some reason, that annoyed me even more. I thought he was making fun of me behind my back. It seems I was in the mood to take everything the wrong way. When we got back to the hotel we sat outside for an hour or so and talked. I couldn’t get it out of my head that I thought he wasn’t interested in me. All I wanted was one of the signs that he wanted me, just a touch, a look or a smile and I wasn’t getting them. As much as I tried to tell him how I felt I didn’t seem to get it across to him, and the more I talked the more upset he got. He thought I wasn’t being fair to him and it upset him that I was so upset.

Eventually we seemed to reach an impasse. The main point was that we knew we loved each other but there were things we needed to work out, more me than him. I needed to work on trusting the fact that he loves me whether he is standing next to me or a hundred miles away. I need to work on the jealousy issue. I have never loved anyone the way I love him and, having been through the months of self discovery, I had found emotions that I didn’t know I could feel, with an intensity that can be overbearing. The main point for me was that I recognized that I had some work to do. The insecurity followed me around for a day or two afterward but I tried hard to just enjoy the time, and not focus on the irrational fears.

For his part he knows that he can be mono focused at times. He doesn’t need to be in the same room to know that he loves me and he thought I understood that. For the most part I did, I just lost focus for a while. I was out of my comfort zone.  I was on the other side of the country, away from everything that was familiar. This was my first vacation since I was fourteen years old and I was sharing the time, twenty four by seven, with someone that I loved. I should have guessed that the insecurity would be there and maybe taken time to understand it. By the same token, he had to understand that this wasn’t easy for me and would need to give me some leeway in dealing with how I felt. He got very upset that he had upset me, and that upset me more. It was an ever increasing circle of sadness.

In retrospect I saw this coming and I should have prepared for it. Or maybe I should have prepared him for it. Either way we got through it but I don’t want to go through that again. I think that the process actually strengthened me. During the rest of the stay in Key West I tried to be just ‘me’ and let him be just ‘him’. Each time insecurity crept in I would acknowledge it but not let it take control of me. I would tell myself ‘it’s normal, let it be’. It seemed to work.

It serves to remind me always that this is going to be a work in process, trying to understand the newness of what I feel and how it affects those around me. I have noticed trends in moods. I think the episode in Key West for instance, was more me being in unfamiliar surroundings and unsure of myself from that. My partner has traveled a lot and isn’t fazed by it. I then created the insecurity by wrongly assessing the situation around me. Since that time I have made a conscious effort to understand what I am feeling when insecurity creeps in and am trying to positively affirm to myself that it is normal, natural and harmless. Time will tell if I am going down the right path but I have found that it has worked well for me so far.

One last note on this topic, for now, is that emotions don’t normally come as single entities. That was a shocker to me since I thought you could only feel one thing at a time. Part of the learning process is working out how many emotions are involved in a particular moment, what caused them and what the driving factor is. I didn’t know that sometimes anger is necessary in a situation to establish a point, but anxiety will cut off access to the thoughts I need to address the angry situation. The end result of that one is feeling exhasperated that I couldn’t say what I know was right because I was too anxious to access the thought. Does that make sense? So, part of this is learning coping mechanisms – ways to identify how many, and which emotions are there, and to keep anxiety at bay. Not an easy thing for me, believe me.

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The Process of Adjustment

April 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

What I have noticed going through this process is that I can’t tell myself that I am healing and growing, much as I want to. I can tell myself that everything is going to be all right, and I can tell myself that it wasn’t my fault but am I still trying to convince myself, or do I actually believe it? It can be quite disturbing trying to think yourself into change and I sometimes wonder if that focus can actually help you adapt your thought enough to see or feel any change. It’s just a thought. The reality for me is that when it becomes real you don’t need to believe it, it just ‘is’. I’m not sure how to quantify that one, just that you move on – it just is. Maybe by realizing that you are not asking the question anymore.

I believe that knowing I was healing was more of a subconscious thing,  something I felt as the therapy moved forward. Sometimes I found myself hard pressed to notice anything had changed at all. It’s hard to try to explain that point to yourself after spending so many years telling yourself how to feel and what to feel. I had to wonder if I was trying to convince myself of an attitude change, or did it actually happen? The point is though, that it’s not something that needed to be said, it is something that needed to be felt. An example is, do I really believe that it wasn’t my fault, or am I trying to convince myself of it still? Maybe one way of looking at it is the difference between ‘saying’ that it wasn’t my fault and ‘knowing’ that it wasn’t my fault. The difference in the wording in that sentence is enormous. How do I know for sure either way when my conscious mind tries to convince me otherwise? Bear in mind of course that I am supposed to be in control of my conscious mind – or am I? I find the difference is in what I feel. My perception changed like someone had switched on a light and I just knew. I know that paragraph doesn’t read well, but it is real, so I’m going to leave it be.

For me it was as subtle as a reassuring feeling of calm. I knew the fight was still on and that it was still a fierce battle, but I knew that I was healing; I knew it, I felt it and I realized it; and in that moment of ‘knowing’, the relief that I felt was incredible and almost overwhelming. I’m not sure that I can do justice to the feeling. It’s so ‘inside’ that it just ‘is’. I don’t have to contemplate it; I don’t have to think around it; I don’t even have to understand it because it just ‘is’. It’s an epiphany, like someone just opened my eyes for the first time. Part of the weight on your shoulders is released and in doing that it becomes time to move on. I know I kept repeating the points in the preceding paragraphs but I want to make sure that I get that point across. I believe it is an important one!

It was hard enough to reach any point of ‘knowing’ in my battle with the many faces that I had created to cope with my life. I spent so much time in the moment of the memories and in the learned behaviors that changes were painful, even if they were for the good.  Sometimes I would be the one standing in the way of change, almost as if I didn’t want the change to happen. I learned along the way that sometimes the familiarity that I felt in the bad habits could be enough to make me resist change since familiar meant comfort in a way. Sometimes all I wanted was comfort, and I found that comfort in the negative learned behaviors. That is a tough battle to fight. You would think that you would stand up strong and resist, but for that you need strength. I think the comfort was like an old friend, something that was familiar and always there whether you were happy or sad. We all have some resistance to change and in fighting this battle all I wanted was some comfort. Like I said earlier, that is a deceptively hard lesson to learn.

Therapists will help you through the process of change and adjustment; books will tell you that it has happened, and can happen to you; friends will tell you that they can see it but it is not real until ‘you tell ‘you’; and that is where the process of adjustment comes in for me, and that is where a lot of pain lies. To finally admit it did happen – that hurts so much. The flip side is to finally know that it wasn’t your fault. Both were profound moments, both starting points for ‘the next step’, for healing.

After realizing that there were tangible results that I may not have thought I had achieved, it actually became easier to understand them. If you have felt that feeling of ‘knowing’ once, you can surely recognize it and feel it again. I can’t tell you how it feels, it just ‘is’, but you will know when you feel it. It’s profound, it’s an ‘aha’ moment. The light bulb goes on and you just know! One big one for me is that I couldn’t hold down a relationship for longer than a couple of months. I am now in a long term relationship. Another is that you may not act out as much as you normally do, but didn’t make a conscious decision to change that. You may react in a different way to anger, or not get angry at the same triggers. There are so many things that could change that it is very easy to miss them. Odd that I said that, but it’s the truth. The point is, simple and odd as it may sound, that you may not have noticed that part of you changed until a little further down the road but when you do, it is such a calming thought. Aha!

There is so much to gain in just realizing that you have moved on, even if it’s just one step forward, but there isn’t really a way to force the issue. After all, it is subconscious right? Most of mine would come in conversations with my therapist; conversations with my friends and conversations with myself even, and in those moments of contemplation is warmth. In that warmth is a feeling of humanity – something that was alien to me up to then. Maybe saying there isn’t a way to force the issue isn’t quite right. There are ways to move forward, therapy is one of them and it could be seen as forcing the issue. I guess the reality is that without action, there is not much hope of change.

Sometimes you don’t realize change at all, it is others that tell you, and even then it can be indirect but no matter how small, you will realize at some point. Noticing it within yourself comes with practice, as does learning not to fight the changes. With each realization may come a time of learning. Learning how to be this ‘new’ person; learning how to deal with these new thoughts; learning how to cope with what can sometimes feel as new and intense emotions; learning how to release the triggers of the past and hear the words for what they are, just words. Here’s a ‘for instance’. My partner sometimes phrases such as ‘buy it for me daddy’, or ‘please daddy’. He is being playful and using what would normally be a term of endearment. When I first heard him say those words it hurt me, it scared me and it sent me back to my childhood almost instantly. I know he wasn’t intentionally referencing my past but it still hurt me. The term had a trigger attached to it, and so it would if you have been through what we have been through. I told him how it made me feel and said he was sorry but he made a good point. His point was that they are just words. I chose to make them triggers and you know what, he is absolutely right. As I healed more and more I realized more that triggers can be released. I made an effort to remove the trigger and detach any bad meaning from the phrase. I made that effort because my partner should not have to think about the words he uses before he speaks to me; I made that effort because in allowing it to hurt me I was empowering them and empowering the past; I made that effort because I realized that it didn’t really matter anymore. The only reason it had life was because I gave it life. With time it worked. He says those words now and it makes me laugh. His child like quality in that moment is cute and lovable and I chose to attach that emotion to the words instead.

In being verbose with descriptions my hope is to give you an avenue of thought that might not be so scary. That thought is that we have more control over changing the ‘processes’ that cause us harm. Triggers were big for me. They were verbal, situational, sexual and they were all around me. In taking away the sting of the trigger, even if it’s just realizing that it is just a trigger, I took away some of the pain associated with it and opened what I called a new process of adjustment. Triggers and coping mechanisms were all big words that I didn’t understand and it took a while for me to understand what they were, and what they meant. Sometimes coping mechanisms can be reused, or reprogrammed so to speak. Sometimes triggers will remain but knowing what they are allows you to reduce the effect. Maybe they will never totally disappear, but they will certainly have less meaning. If we choose to attach pain to them do we empower them? Just a thought.

We are all so different in so many ways that what works for one may not work for another. As mentioned many times before, the professionals that deal with us in therapy don’t know what we have been through, but they do have many avenues of help to give. Those professionals that concentrate on the area of victims of sexual abuse know more about ‘us’ than we give them credit for. In my mind I didn’t think anyone would understand all the different parts of ‘me’ that made up my daily existence. The reality is that they do; the reality is that they actually understand; the reality is that you can’t shock them. We are the only ones that can heal us but we cannot do it alone. It takes a huge leap of faith to trust a stranger but, you know what, it is worth the effort many times over.

I don’t know any other way of extolling the thought process. I wish I could show you – in a way, I am I guess. No situation is the same. No abuse is exactly the same but there are patterns in the victims, in us that professionals can help with. I thought I was beyond help. Even in my mature adult life I thought I would not be believed. I even tried to deny that it happened and to forget, intentionally. As my life situation changed I found I not only couldn’t run anymore, but didn’t want to. I was tired of my situation and I was tired of being sad and lonely. I was tired of denying who I was, in fact I wanted to know who I was. They say the first step on the road to recovery is accepting you have a problem – they didn’t say how hard that would be.

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A Misguided Trust

April 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

During my journey through the past I was having issues defining my sexuality. So many issues were in my mind that seemed to conflict that I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with. The question was “am I gay”, but that seemed to fade behind the other things that I was dealing with. I searched for some rationale in how to deal with idea of being gay. I knew that in dealing with it I was going to be entering a place in my mind that I didn’t really want to be. How do you cope with being gay if you don’t want to be gay, if indeed you are gay, if indeed you don’t want to be?  Read that sentence a couple of times – it will make sense, believe me! I wasn’t even sure if I didn’t want to be gay, if that makes any sense. Had I associated the desire for sex with men with what my father had done to me? I did not want that, therefore it could not be real, but my drive to have sex with men was overpowering. Was I gay in spite of what my father had done, or because of it? Maybe the answer is simple to most, but it wasn’t to me, and I had no clue how to address it.

I needed anonymous sex, outside in the darkness more often than not. At home was too personal – it had to be outside and it had to be complete strangers. I needed to be satiated. I needed gratification and it had to be raw. It was overpowering. It was not me, it was something inside me that took control and it confused me, scared me and belittled me. It left me feeling dirty, used and so very sad yet I did it again and again, sometimes three times in a day, always in public places.

There was a part of me that longed for the nurturing touch of man, the gentle strength a man can show when he loves you. I wanted that connected feeling of being in a relationship and I knew I couldn’t get that from a woman yet I didn’t want to be gay. I couldn’t fathom if the need for a man in a non-sexual case was linked with a need for a father that loved me during my childhood. I couldn’t discount it but couldn’t accept it either. There was more to it and I wasn’t seeing it. The confusion of the situation was exasperating an already tricky and unbalanced situation and was creating even more confusion in my mind.

I reached out to a Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian and Trans-gender group in my area. I asked them for help with discovering myself. It was the only way of thinking around what I felt without giving the game away to them, them being people that I deemed could hurt me with their knowledge. They put me in touch with a man that led the ‘coming out group’ for mature men. He wanted me to be a part of his group session but the idea of a group of gay men seeing me made me feel sick with fear inside, and so he agreed to meet me one-on-one at the G.B.L.T. center.

We met on a weekday afternoon at the group’s headquarters and we chatted for over an hour. I was tight at first, but settled to giving an outline of my thoughts and reasoning without giving too much detail. He listened and didn’t judge me and I started to relax. I felt comfortable, listened to and was not feeling too raw. We arranged to meet again but the center was closed, so we met at a coffee house. When the coffee house closed I still wanted to talk. I was at what I thought was a pivotal point in the discussion and I needed to explore some thoughts further. He offered to carry on the conversation in his car – that should have been a warning. He had my trust. That was my first mistake.

There were a lot of emotions welling up inside of me. I felt like I was inside a chamber of voices, and the world around me felt distant. I felt disconnected. It was a familiar feeling but I couldn’t quite place it. I was at a point where I thought I could let out some of the hurt inside me and better understand myself. I didn’t feel as alone anymore and took comfort in his words. That was my second mistake.

He initiated sexual contact with me. I let my guard down in the need to feel close, in the need to feel protected by someone, and I let him hold me. At first it felt comfortable and I relaxed again. I don’t know how it got to sexual contact but I knew I didn’t want it. He kept grabbing his groin. I could see he had an erection and he kept motioning his hips and groaning at me. Inside me something kicked in and I succumbed to his need. Thinking about it afterward it was so obvious what his intentions were that I should have known, but I didn’t see it. I’m not sure how or why I gave in but I am pretty sure it was a learned behavior. I don’t even remember giving in, I just remember becoming aware of what I then perceived as a horrific event, looking in from the outside, aware and mortified not only that I had let this happen, but that he had let this happen, that he had taken advantage of me when I was vulnerable.

It was a familiar feeling, almost comforting in its familiarity, yet extremely disturbing – I know that comment doesn’t make any sense but it was how it felt. I was in conflict with my own thought. It was like looking through another person’s eyes. It wasn’t me in that car. It wasn’t happening to me, not again, it couldn’t be real. This man was supposed to support me not have sex with me, but I let him. He took what he wanted and he discarded me when he was done. How familiar was that? Once he had orgasmed he couldn’t get me out of the car quick enough.

I couldn’t get past the fact that it happened and I blamed myself for it. It was a repeat of the past, a learned behavior, an automatic response. I let it happen and I was to blame for not stopping it. Even though I could see the pattern I refused to accept it, let alone stop it. I wasn’t ready at that point to see it for what it was. It felt like rape but I knew I hadn’t resisted.

Once he had satiated his need, it was over with. I could see it in his eyes. I could read his face just like my fathers. He wanted no more talk. He wouldn’t look at me. His tone was quiet and low. He just wanted me to leave. The deed was done and I wasn’t welcome anymore.

I felt like a five year old again. The familiarity was so intense that it burned me. It was like being a child again but knowing this time I could have stopped him and didn’t. In that moment I lost touch with myself – it was over and I wanted to be done with life. I wanted to be at peace by taking this huge step and actually talking to someone about being gay, but now I felt dirty, tarnished, used and even abused, and I could have stopped him.

My intention was to drive to the cliffs near Santa Cruz and take my own life. I saw no worth in who I was and I saw no future. I was a black belt, a martial arts instructor and a tactical master instructor in self defense; I was a gym fit, strong and lean man and still I didn’t stop him. I had taken martial arts to put myself in a position where no-one would be able to do this to me again but I didn’t know that it wasn’t just physical prowess, or the ability to fight. If your mind is weak your body will follow its lead. All the work myself and my therapist had done to reach that point had been blown away in one moment of selfishness. I felt tears welling up in my eyes but they wouldn’t come out. I felt the past hit me like a wall of water and my energy drained away. I drove away – I was done.

I don’t remember if I called my therapist. I don’t remember the next few hours after that. I remember feeling numb and knowing that if I was to die, it would have to be quick and easy. I deserved that much.

Much as I tried to convince myself that death was the only option, I couldn’t do it. It felt like someone inside of me refused to let me go. It felt like I was fighting myself for the right to die. I became frustrated because I couldn’t take my own life. I was holding myself back and I didn’t know why. I saw it as another failure. I wasn’t even strong enough to kill myself. It wasn’t a cry for help – it was real. I disconnected from the real world and have no memory of what I did, or where I went. All I know is that I came back – but I don’t know how.

The residual effect was devastating and it enraged me more and more when I thought about it. I told my therapist what had happened and I could feel her reaction, even though she tried not to show it. I couldn’t draw it to a conclusion it just raged inside me. I was on the edge of oblivion for at least a couple of weeks, and the residual effect stayed with me for months after that. I was fighting myself on the inside, like I was a bystander.

I continued to get emails from him asking me if I wanted to see him again, even though I told him what he had done was wrong and that he should stay away. He didn’t seem to listen – he didn’t seem to care. He thought he could help me more if we talked face to face again. He didn’t think he had done anything wrong. His failure to accept blame reinforced my self hate for allowing it to happen. I had to fight every step of the way to maintain any sense of order, any sense of who I was.

All I could do was work on it, work on reinforcing that it was a learned behavior and try to move beyond it. I’m still not sure how I dealt with it. My memory of that period of time isn’t so good, but my therapists tireless efforts guided me, and I stayed safe.

Further Down The Road

I had entered a relationship with someone I liked very much. We had been dating for just over a month when we went to a gay Christmas choir concert. Initially it was a great evening starting with a meal with some friends. After the meal a few of us went on to the concert.

I was reading the program and noticed this guys name not only as a choir member, but leader of the choir. It was the guy that all but raped me. I burned to the spot I was standing in. My body temperature literally rose and I broke out in a sweat. I had already told my date what had happened previously and now I had to show him again the effect this guy had on me. I felt intense emotion; sadness, bitterness, resentment – but no anger. I could have stayed quiet but my date would have noticed the mood. It would have been unfair to let him see that without knowing what was going on. I was thinking more of him than me.

I told him about the name on the program and told him how I felt. He was extremely concerned for me and more than willing to leave the concert, even though two of his friends were singing in the choir. I was surprised, pleasantly so that he was so concerned, and that helped me cope with the situation. I opted to stay. I opted to accept that I would not allow this person to have such a dramatic effect on my life, let alone my relationship. Maybe facing it would take the edge of it and I could move on.

We stayed for the whole concert. I was determined not to let this person get the better of me and the more I stayed in that situation, the more I took control. I knew that at any point if I wanted to leave, we would leave. I didn’t want a confrontation with him and I didn’t want him to have any control over me.
The concert ended and we met with my dates friends afterwards. We chatted a while and then left. It was profound for me. It was scary for me and it wasn’t a situation I wanted to show someone one month into a relationship, but we dealt with it together. It was at that point that I realized I could perhaps start to put the situation to rest. Sometimes the little things make the penny drop!

No matter how I look at it, it still happened and I still see it as rape. No-one can ever expect anyone to take that lightly and I see that it could have been so much more dangerous than it was. I am extremely sad that it happened and profoundly hurt, but I realize now that my response to his approach was a learned behavior and, in a time when I was vulnerable, weak even, it was easy to allow it to happen. That being said, it is done. It is in the past, it is (for the most part) dealt with.

And again!

I am still not totally free of the situation. I have been in my current relationship for over two years now – remember how I described the situation above when we saw him again? We go to a non denominational church most Sundays (no crosses, no bibles etc.) and he was there. I couldn’t believe my eyes, or my luck. There sitting a row from us was the very same man. I was saddened by him, which showed me that I still held on to something. But then if you look at the situation how can you not hold on to something like that?

A month or two later he actually sat next to me. I didn’t know what to feel or what to think – I froze. My partner was ever present and ready to move me away if it got too much. I couldn’t believe what was happening. He then turned to me and introduced himself like he had never seen me before. I was more than stumped, I was in mild shock. He didn’t recognize me. I didn’t even see an inkling of recognition in his eyes. It felt to me that he had managed to get to me again but not knowing who I was, and not acknowledging what he had done.

The process of letting go of that isn’t as easy as I thought it was but I’m still of the impression that it’s not an insurmountable problem. I just haven’t found the right way to deal with it yet. To give someone so much power of you is somewhat scary. Not knowing how you will respond is scary. Knowing that it still affects you is scary but I still have a choice. Each time I see him he owns me a little less. Perhaps there is an easier way to deal with this but, for now, this is how I’m playing it out.

I’m not sure why I feel embarrassed when I see him. It’s not like I was the one to blame, even if I feel that way. I try to rationalize the emotions attached to the situation but I always come up blank. That being said I can tolerate him being around me, for now. I have a right to be upset and I will use that right when I feel it is needed, but it will always be in a non-destructive manner.  This part of the story is going to be an ongoing thing, a work in progress. I don’t know how it will end, but I do know it will end.

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Human Nature

April 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Human nature troubled me – well, I guess it still troubles me somewhat. I didn’t quite understand the way it worked. Having built my core self around what I thought were the laws of society in general, I was under the impression that truth was truth and honesty prevailed – that is a painful mistake to make. If you made a promise you were supposed to keep it, regardless. Honesty and integrity where supposed to be the rule. It sounds so naive saying that now, but I didn’t know any different, and it seemed that I didn’t notice the reality (or didn’t want to). I know it sounds somewhat out there. Too much fairytale and not enough reality. I had to find those ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’ traits, and more, and build myself, my personality.

I used a ‘theory’ to build myself, my outward persona. I did that by modeling successful people. I would watch those that I thought were successful, that matched the honesty and integrity traits, but I would also watch how they handled situations I didn’t know how to handle, and I would copy them, copy that trait. I would see how they interacted and try to mimic them, learn their ‘way’. I would build my outward self around those traits. I didn’t know how to be me, so I would be them instead. Back to my perception of reality, I thought this was the way it worked. How sad that it wasn’t the truth. How sad that it is just a front.

The world around us is all about ‘us’, or is that ‘all about me’. There has to be that element of self preservation and doing for yourself, it’s human nature and mostly harmless. We all have needs. It is sad to note that there are so many that don’t care about anyone else around them. That’s a generalized comment I know, but my faith in human nature keeps taking a battering, even now. The difference now is that I don’t take it as personally. I still maintain my values and moral principles but have no real expectation that anyone else has the same. That way I won’t be disappointed. That being said, it’s still sad.

I still have a hard time understand motives of people yet I know that sometimes we don’t have the strength to fight our inner thoughts, our demons. How ironic it is that I am again stuck on the duality of life. We are faced with so many choices and directions on a daily basis that sometimes it is hard to work out which way to go, and even if we trust in our hearts we can be stung. I know we aren’t responsible for those around us but it’s hard to want to be a part of a society whose values are motivated by self gain at the detriment of others. We’ve seen countless times the brutality of ‘man’; and we’ve seen how self motivation can cause so much sadness and pain, and how power corrupts, and more. My way of dealing with those people was to withdraw from society. For the most part I would work hard all day. I would teach martial arts in the evening and then go home and lock myself into my inner world. I know I’m not a saint; I know I have my imperfections but I always strive to be true to myself and it really irks me that others perceptions of being true to themselves means at the detriment of others. We have a choice in all of this – ‘we’ just don’t seem to care about other avenues.

My home was indeed my castle during the hard times, the one place I felt safe and was not being judged. With computers and my music I could create any world I chose and could remain ignorant to the world around me (blinkers on?). Obviously I was in a dream world but, for a while, it helped me be at peace, which was until the ‘sexual urges’ hit. The night became a friend that would hide the fact that I wanted to be outside cruising for illicit sex with strangers. That became another nightmare and I address that in the chapter ‘Sexual Addiction’.

Back to the point

I have deviated from the point of this chapter, human nature. It irked me to see double standards everywhere, yet it is supposedly human nature. If that is the case, how do we as a civilization survive? If that is the case, aren’t then all so called truths just words to cover the moment, to be changed when the whim suits? I still don’t understand the depth of human nature but I am getting an idea of the fine balance between perception of self and actual self. In other words ‘who we really are’, and ‘who we are seen to be’. We all have skeletons in our closet, it’s our perception of those that counts isn’t it?

I wonder how a driving force can be so strong that it forces you to commit an act that is socially unacceptable such as rape, murder and child abuse etc. What does it say about someone’s character when they say ‘I couldn’t help it?’ Can we, as victims, believe that they couldn’t help it? It’s a trying point to think about. As victims we have serious issues with emotional areas of our lives. We are conflicted because some of the things that we do to cope are deemed socially unacceptable, but we can’t help doing them – does that make us as bad as the abusers? For instance, when we act out the impulse to get that moment of gratification is very overpowering; or the thrill of the chase to getting that sense of completion, no matter how misguided it is, is so strong that we can’t stop it. In my mind I was taking actions that I couldn’t help. I didn’t know that I was returning myself to a situation that my abused mind could understand, no matter how wrong the situation was. I just knew the impulse was stronger than me and that I had to do it. The major difference that I see is the only person that was hurt by my actions was ‘me’, but is that my excuse, my reason – or am I a hypocrite?

What I realized (read learned) in the long run was that I was doing my very best for everyone else, but I was not looking out for ‘me’. The only person that was suffering was ‘me’. I would try to look after everyone else, but that was usually to my detriment, and I think that was because I thought I didn’t deserve looking after. That extended to all areas of my life; trust, love and even money. I am still learning the value of ‘self’; I am still trying to give myself the same respect I give others. Each time I accept that I am worthy, I grow a little more. My therapist still makes the point when I exclude myself from something I deserve. She reminds me that I deserve it just as much as anyone else, but sometimes it’s still hard to accept. My partner wishes I could see with his eyes to understand how much he loves and adores me. It’s hard to give yourself permission to think of self, and that part of human nature hurts. I’m getting there – day by day building, giving myself permission to accept myself as an equal (yes, I meant to say it that way).

What Now?

I really don’t know the ‘what now’ part. I deal day to day with the remnants of the past that cause issues in my life. Each day that I take a step forward I acknowledge that I am succeeding; growing; learning. Each day it is still hard to acknowledge that I deserve success. I try not to ponder on the grand scheme of human nature because it scares me still – I love humanity, I just don’t seem to like people. I understand the way the mind can cause conflict and deviation, and that scares me too. I try to live the principles that have kept me alive, awake and aware so far. I try to stay true to the line that I thought was right and, in doing that, I get some feeling of value and security. I try to acknowledge when I have overcome and obstacle; or when I am complimented. Small measures, but they yield great results. It is harder that it sounds for us, but it is not insurmountable.

I still find it hard to understand the very foundation of human nature. I still have a strong core when it comes to upholding my principles and beliefs, and I try very hard to live on the side of ‘the greater good’. It scares me though, knowing that my perception of the balance of humanity itself is based on a premise that I don’t seem to understand or trust. The premise of human nature has so many sides, so many angles that I get very confused thinking about it. The balance of life in general evolves around us, us being the communal mind. The rules are put in place by a group of people who think that they are the majority, therefore they state ‘the norm’ but in a lot of cases they can be wrong. So, a group of people who think they are superior to everyone else, impose their ideals by creating what they think is the norm, and state it to everyone, that we would have to follow. This is our society – how on earth can that be right? Isn’t that how most of the worlds issues start?

This thought process can cause issues for me so I tend to not think on it too much these days. The balance, however tentative, is there. For the most part human nature can be seen to working but I still know that it is also primal. That’s enough to keep me on my toes. I may not trust society, but I can cope with it, as long as I have a safe place. My home is still my safe place – thankfully.

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Coping With Relationships

April 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

The truth of my life, up to this point, was that I didn’t cope with relationships at all. I was always isolated, unreachable, somewhat unapproachable and very, very lonely. I could trust no-one and that led to mistrust from me, and of me. I think people sensed I was holding something back and that left them at arms length from me. It sounds paranoid, and maybe it is, but I am sure that we can get a sense of someone if we interact with them closely enough. Maybe it was my subconscious sparing me endless mistakes – or not.

I wasn’t sure where I fit in, in the world around me. I wasn’t sure that I fit in at all, even in my own insular world. Even though I had a strong will to live it seemed that there was nothing to live for, yet I still wanted to live. The world around me would never understand me and that ruled out any relationships. I created the box around which I protected myself. In my inane attempt to keep myself safe I isolated myself from real life, and from the chance of being someone. My thought was that, without someone to love me, I was no-one and would never be anyone – that had been drilled in to me at childhood. Part of that isn’t a conscious decision to be excluded or isolated. Sometimes if felt like I would purposely sabotage relationships so that I didn’t have to stay in them, and that wasn’t just love interests either. Part of that also was the lack of emotional maturity in knowing how to cope with relationships of any kind. Part of that was probably fear of rejection – I’m speculating because I don’t really know.

Within areas of my life I had what I thought were close friends, but they mostly centered round a particular area; martial arts people in the martial arts world and work people in the work world and so on. There was no conformity that I could see. No-one traversed my different worlds with me and I couldn’t mix those worlds since they required different persona’s, and I didn’t know how to transition between those. Even with some quality friends I was painfully lonely, let alone emotionally confused; all the time knowing I had this big secret. I couldn’t cope with women on an emotional level. It felt like I was dealing with a being from another planet. I had no idea what I was supposed to feel, do or say, and sex with women just didn’t have the edge for me that I knew it had for other men. I know that sounds ‘out there’ but the reality of it keeps coming back to me, even now. Why didn’t I see it for what it was? It was like having a partitioned life. I had to be a different person in each part of it but I wasn’t aware of that partitioning until two or more parts of my life tried to coexist. There were clues all over the place that something was amiss, I just couldn’t (didn’t want to?) see them.

What little experience I had with relationships with men in recent years I had felt more fulfilled and more alive than I ever did with a woman. I still chose to ignore the reality of who I was, erring on the side of being a straight male with a penchant for sex with men – modern thinking – not. Instead of facing the idea, I dived headlong into the world of elicit sex with men, acting out anytime I could and pushing the boundaries of sexual contact to increasingly dangerous levels. Acting out was an escape from any relationships, be they physical, mental or whatever. Nothing existed when I acted out, but for the need to satiate that desire however lurid that was, and that desire wasn’t always about achieving an orgasm. All the time these episodes of acting out would add to my self hatred and isolation. I felt dirty and used, even though I was the initiator. It was getting to be a death spiral.

I had not entertained the thought that all of these relationship issues, that acting out, and other dysfunctional parts of my life were connected. I thought I was a bad person. I thought I was weak. I thought I was deranged at times, and I thought I was worthless for it all. I see the pattern now – but during those times I didn’t.

Working with my therapist we took the emphasis off sexual preference. I remember her saying ‘does it have to have a label’? Somehow that made it okay for me to explore my sexuality more because I wasn’t judging by others’ standards, I was thinking about what I wanted and what I felt and what was right for me. I have always known that I am attracted to men but had never given myself permission to just be ‘me’. I have always known that I felt more alive with men but didn’t want to make that connection with being ‘gay’. I literally didn’t want to be gay to start with, and that was a traumatic thought. My therapist helped me identify areas of my life that linked to my past, and worked with me to sort through them. It was no easy task for me, but she had unlinked the stigma of being gay. Her simple statement ‘does it have to have a label’ (talking about gay or straight relationships) was profound. I was attaching the stigma, not society. I was denying myself the right to explore my own happiness, and my own sexuality because of my perceptions. Wow – a door opened.

To go back a little further in my history to my dating habits will give a better idea of how things were. My first dating experience was at age thirteen and lasted the sum total of three days. After that I didn’t data again until I was eighteen, and that was a similar disaster. I didn’t know how to cope with relationships, how to cope with women, or even what I was supposed to do. The first time I had sex I remember thinking that I had more fun with my hand. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. It just didn’t do it for me. I put it down to lack of maturity and lack of knowledge – and being painfully shy didn’t help.

I met a woman at age twenty that was willing to deal with me and I married her soon after. She hadn’t shown me love but I had seen that she liked me, and that was all I had ever wanted. I think in my heart I knew that we were too young to be married so young, but she liked me; in fact, she loved me! We had two children together and I tried so hard to be the husband but I couldn’t do it. I was the only guy I knew that didn’t want to have sex. I didn’t have sex with men during that time, but I had fantasized about it. I had messed around with friends in school, but all school boys do that – don’t they? I also had vague notions of my father but I couldn’t put the thought together enough to understand what it was I was seeing. How sad it was that I hurt her so much by divorcing her. I put her through so much pain, and my children – the sadness attached to that is still raw. Another subject to beat myself up about

Back to coping with relationships, there was a lot of confusion in my mind about relationships in general. If it felt so unnatural why did I even bother? All I did was hurt them or hurt myself, or both. The confusion was so profound that I couldn’t see a way out. There were no other options right? Wrong! I was running down the wrong path. I didn’t want to see the truth.

Here’s the crux of it – I am gay. I said I didn’t want to be, maybe I didn’t, but I am. I knew that what little time I had in relationships with men gave me more satisfaction than with women, and not just the sexual part. Being gay was natural. I didn’t have to think how to react, it was instinct. Sex with men was natural, exhilerating and fulfilling – ah, that’s how sexual desire was meant to be – I get it now. I had put the stigma of my father sexually abusing me so far in the front of my mind that I refused to be gay, for all the wrong reasons. Now I know what it’s like to be loved unconditionally. Maybe society doesn’t understand but I am more at home in my sexuality, with men, than I ever was with women. This is instinct, I was born this way – I don’t have to fight it. That process closed a chapter of self hatred and opened a chapter of fulfillment, passion, love and a long term relationship. Yes, this one has lasted four years and counting, and I am deeply in love. No-one can take that away from me.

For those that are not gay but are suffering the journey from childhood sexual abuse – don’t lose hope. You have the right to love and be loved but it has to start with you, with your acceptance of yourself. You deserve the same happiness as everyone else but you have to know that you are deserving of that – I know you are! I’ve been there, and i can see the other side – it is so very much worth the fight! It’s a worthy goal to work towards, and you will succeed. No – it’s not easy – but the rewards are immeasurable, huge! Aren’t you worth that?

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Sexual Addiction

April 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

This is one of the hardest things for me to write about, let alone admit. The shame attached to this was so painful that I couldn’t even mention it to my therapist. Even now I struggle with the truth of it. ‘It’ being the situation as much as acting out.

It’s hard to grasp or understand why anyone would willingly put themselves in situations that were dangerous, physically or mentally. When you are in those situations it is even harder to grasp the lack of control; or for my part, the lack of caring. When I was in the frame of mind of ‘acting out’ all I cared about was acting out. Nothing else mattered and nothing else would satiate the need, even though I didn’t really understand what the need was. In a strange sort of way the process of acting out was like a friend, familiar and somewhat comforting and always there. Hours would pass and I would be unaware of the world around me. My focus was what I was doing and nothing else. The hunt for sex was all consuming; the act of having sex at night in a public place was exhilarating and a powerful aphrodisiac. Just the thought of it would get me extremely aroused. It would give me strength and satisfaction, but it was short lived and I know it was dangerous in many ways.

Revealing these things to my therapist would wrench at my heart. I knew what I was doing was wrong but the need was so deep that I would become another person. I became a part of a subculture of similar minded men. It wasn’t me, or that is what I felt because rational thought didn’t seem to occur when I was in that frame of mind. The more I ‘acted out’, the more disturbed I became. The more disturbed I became, the more I ‘acted out’, an endless loop it would appear. I wasn’t full of remorse afteward though. I would feel empty, tired and even used. Even though I had put myself in those situations, I still felt used.

I knew the only way I could keep myself safe was to preoccupy myself with something else. Something that would consume me, that would require a huge commitment from me, and that would tax me physically and mentally. Having trained for martial arts prior to moving to my current location I decided to commit myself back into that training. I knew the commitment level required – I knew the regimen I was getting into and I hoped above hope that training again would keep me safe. For five years I taught and trained every night, not getting home until 8:30 at the earliest. I would even teach and train on Saturday mornings to try to work off some energy. I became committed again to martial arts and gained another black belt in a different style.

For the most part that worked. I was too tired after teaching and training to even contemplate acting out – plus I hadn’t had dinner yet so I was hungry. The combination kept me at bay for the most part. The inclination was still there, but was under some basic control. The issues came about at weekends since there was no martial arts commitment. Saturday evenings were ‘play time’, and any hope of resisting the urge would disappear with the first thought of acting out. Those evenings would be the pinnacle of my week and I would plan where I was going to go and what I was going to get up to. Again, for the most part, it was at night. There was something about the night that made it ok, made it easier.

During the first few months of therapy it seemed to get worse, and I was becoming distraught as to why it wasn’t getting easier. The more I acted out the more chance there was of either getting caught, or catching an STD. I started to open up a little to my therapist about it. The only way I could communicate it to her was to write a letter, and give that to her after a therapy session. I couldn’t tell her to her face, and I coulnd’t be in the room when she read it. In some small way, this helped. At least I could tell her, one way or another.

So, the question is was it sexual addiction, or acting out? Or is one a component of the other? I don’t really know the answer. I’m still highly sexually active but now I have a partner, that need gets satiated. I still sometimes feel the urge to act out, but I don’t act on it. I sometimes visit the adult bookstores I used to go to, but now if the urge to share myself is there I take care of the need in a closed booth. Will the urge ever go away? I don’t really know, but I do know that I have more control over it now. The need to be someone else isn’t there anymore. I don’t have to hide from myself anymore, and that’s comfortable. I don’t teach martial arts anymore either. I’ve been in a commited relationship for four years and that is all I need. We are as in love (and as child like) with each other now, as we were at the beginning. We still hold hands and we make time to be ourselves. I’m still addicted to sex, but with one man only.

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Maintaining a Career

April 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I am still not sure how I managed to build a career up to the point of facing the past, and still go through what I have been going through, let alone living with the past.. My thought is that the ability to ‘act out’ (not just sexually) and to segregate areas of my personality (and my life) allowed me some leeway to maintaining some sort of sanity in my career. I was always paranoid about being fired; paranoid about my boss being able to control me and painfully aware of the tentative line one walks in the corporate world, but I also knew that I could shut off the parts of me that didn’t need to be there. Now I know that it is easier to integrate my real self into all areas of my life, but that wasn’t something I could have done when I started working in the US. I love my career and because of the intensity of working in IT in Silicon Valley, it became an escape.

When I left home at 16 years old I served twelve years in the military, and did reasonably well. I think that I subconsciously knew that letting someone else control my destiny was the only way I was going to get through those years. I could either get a structured life through the military, or (I perceived) I would end up on the wrong side of the law. I had always wanted to be in the military and was accepted at age sixteen, what the British called a boy entrant.

It must have been hard work for those around me to work with me – I was painfully shy and quite insecure. I marvel at the fact that they accepted me in the first place. It must have difficult for them to understand anything about me. I know, for my part, that it was hard becoming a part of a group of people, an entity such as the military is, and I know that I was not accepted for the most part of my career. The main point for me was someone else was calling the shots and, for some reason, I bound myself to it. It would have been so easy to have been the bad boy, even before the military, but I think I was too introspective for that. I was bullied all  through school and was known by the teachers to be an under achiever. If anyone tried to get close to me to find out why I didn’t apply myself I would shut down – shut them out. Did they try hard enough? I hold guilt thinking that if I had told just one of them the truth early on in my childhood, I could have been spared the hardships that I suffered at my parents hands. At least I aimed for the military and managed to get in.

After those twelve years, and a failed marriage, I came back into the civilian world, and what a culture shock that was. I didn’t have the discipline of the military life around me anymore, but I did maintain the self discipline, for the most part. I floundered badly for a couple of years. I couldn’t make it work and the more frustrated I got at my lack of progress, the more the door opened up to allow the memories through. I’m not saying there was a direct connection but it always seems to get worse when you are already struggling. My only method of survival was to split off into a different ‘personality’. I don’t mean being schizophrenic, I mean since I couldn’t fully integrate myself into real life I had personalities that dealt with the different areas – I called them personas in previous chapters.

How does this play into maintaining a career? Those personas allowed me to act out as someone else, and be a ‘professional’ and, in doing that I managed to build a healthy business. The more I realized I could work in that ‘box’ the more I worked at it, the more successful I seemed to be, but there was always something missing – the real me. I realized that in working so many hours I was denying myself my own life. Not in the fact of wasting time, but in pretending that everything was okay. The more that came to realization the more detached I felt, the less I wanted to be detached. It was leading to a decision – make or break per say – but I wasn’t sure which way that decision was going.

I took a leap of faith when I went into therapy. I was already successful in my career but I wanted that success, and I wanted integration of all the splintered personas – I wanted to be whole. Using the knowledge and ability to be successul I grew my career whilst going through therapy, applying all of the lessons and the truths to let go of the past, but also to reinforce and strengthen the present. During that process, and working with my therapist I began integrating myself back into one persona, with the ability to flow easily between situations. Liken it to this – someone at home can be on the phone with their boss – he/she would have no problem redirecting themselves to talk to their spouse and/or their child, they flow between employee, spouse and parent – that’s what I mean by integration. My personas were separate entities, and there was no flow. Does that make sense? That’s how I maintained a career while dealing with my tangled life.

I’m not saying it’s easy, and I’m not saying that this is true for everyone – it’s just a part of the journey for me, and it’s an understanding of just how far I have come.

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Managing Change

April 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I have thought about how I have managed change as I have transitioned through the therapy. I am profoundly aware of the thought that I didn’t consciously change anything, and I am in awe of the fact that the changes have happened at all. I’m not sure that I have managed change to be honest; more that is was a part of the process for me, and that it happened naturally, organically. Without stating the obvious, I knew that something had to change for life to become bearable but I did not know what, how, when or why, or even if I could let change happen. Although it probably sounds a little naive to state that I have not managed change, it is my perception, which is not necessarily the reality. Change has occurred; I’m just not sure how to ‘see’ it. Maybe I am looking too hard for something that just ‘is’.

I have a vague idea of change, something that I have mulled over in my mind and I often get a little caught up in trying to define what caused the changes in me, and how they came about. There is the obvious answer, therapy, and that is the truth of it. I wrote a few notes when trying to rationalize my thoughts and the first question I came across in my mind was ‘Are the changes willing’? Well, I suppose they have to be or we wouldn’t let them happen, assuming we are caught in the cycle of pain. If we don’t have a notion of them do we even know that they are occurring? It sounds a little off thinking that we don’t know, but sometimes is just feels like that. Maybe that is why we get into the cycle of pain after all. We don’t see the changes in us that the subconscious memories are causing, yet we get bitter knowing that we hurt. Sometimes is might not be apparent in real terms that we understand the hurt, just that we live with it. When it has gone there is a profound sense of knowing it is different, knowing it is better and hoping that ‘better’ will last. There can be confusion though when the you feel a sense of loss from a change occurring. If it’s a positive change it can get a tad difficult to get past that negative sense.

Not knowing that the change was occurring but knowing that I felt better about something, for me, was quite confusing. This is change, but is the change voluntary; instinctual? It’s an unwritten notion that is the absolute truth for that moment; you don’t know it, you feel it, understand it and, more to the point, trust it. I’m not even sure if instinctual is the right word, the change just ‘is’. It’s a realization in a sense that it’s almost an out of body experience. The time has passed and you have changed. You have mastered that level of consciousness and it’s time to move on. Your attitude has changed, your foundation becomes stronger and you strive for the next goal on your path to recovery, on the path to becoming a whole person. It sounds repetitive but it’s quite profound.

The point at which we define the level of changes hinges around whether it’s a conscious change, or not. At the point where your subconscious has reached the level it needs to progress you to the next level, change is inevitable. You might fight it thinking it is wrong. Most people resist change, even though it can be positive. In fact, there is cycle of managing change that shows how easy it is to become embroiled in the wrong side of the emotional attachment to a situation, a state of being so to speak. The point there is that whilst we don’t understand why we have to move forward, we know we have to, if that makes sense. That, in itself, can be extremely scary and disconcerting. I’m sure this whole chapter is hugely confusing but I’m telling it like it is. The reality of it for me was that it happened – I tried not to dwell on it for fear of being confused.

The problem I hit is, do we know that this is an instinctual response, an emotional response, or even a learned behavior? It could feasibly be any of those and if you have any doubt about the change, perhaps it isn’t positive after all? Or maybe resistance to change is the block. It’s such an inexact science that it is so easily misunderstood, in my opinion. If we are in a state of mind that fears change we could unintentionally block our own progress. If your life cycle has involved change that has been negative you may push against it. If you are fighting for your life through crisis sometimes, sometimes sense does not prevail and you may push against something that is trying to help. It’s as clear as mud, as they say. Confused yet? Am I over analyzing this?

Managing change, for me, was knowing that the process I was going through would change me for the better. I knew I had to let go of the past, I knew I had to find a way to understand the unspoken things that lingered in my subconscious and I knew that the time was right. The rest was supposition.
I can see how easy it is to remain on the wrong side of change. A leap of faith is needed to make any forward motion. Strength of character is needed to maintain an even keel and sometimes victims don’t have that. I know I didn’t in the ‘real’ me, and I am not sure where the drive to move forward came from. My spirit was strong enough at that point to allow me to be open to change.

Now I view the changes with an open mind and an open heart. It’s a constant medley of working with the thoughts and feelings and making sure that I am not on the wrong side of the curve. I trust in my therapist, and my friends, to help guide me when I get a little lost, but I know deep inside me that the stage is set and the path is predominantly forward. Managing change is now a way of life and accepting change becomes easier each time.

Looking at that a little further down the road is it naïve of me to say that I hadn’t noticed the change. I have thought about that a fair amount and still come to the conclusion that I wasn’t really aware. I know that it happened mainly in that my responses to situations changed; my needs to fulfill my life changed; my instinct about how to go about managing change changed. See how confusing it gets? It’s another of those thoughts that don’t seem to make sense, yet they occur.

If I were to make a statement of fact based on logical thought, I knew I was changing. If I were to make an emotional statement I would say I didn’t change, the situation around me did. Maybe I still don’t accept change, it’s a scary thing after all. I think that I have moved to a point where I trust myself enough to not push back against it all the time, and knowing that you can effect that change and control it to some degree gives me an element of personal power that I have never had.

The changes have not brought about miracles that you can see. It has increased the quality of my life but I am still the same ‘me’ that I always was, just a happier, more content ‘me’. My fear that change would take ‘me’ away was irrational but very real, and I know now that can’t be done, that I am still in here even if it feels sometimes like I am still a child. Stripping away the fear and the auto responses is hard work. Trusting someone is hard work. Knowing that sometimes change is good is hard work. Knowing that sometimes change won’t work is easier to understand, harder to recover from and still hard work.

One last point is that I have learned not to expect miracles. It’s a odd way of thinking, believing that some extraordinary thing is going to happen to make my life perfect. It’s human to know that is not the case but a victim finds that hard to understand. I see it, I see the changes in me and I am grateful. I also see the anger that is still in me and I still see the kid that needs to grow up. That will never change but, you know what, I don’t have to manage change anymore. It just is.

I wonder how many times I’ve used the word change in this chapter? I noticed when reading back through it that I went back and forward on the thought process, but I decided to leave it as it is, since it shows the confusion that can come with therapy. Suffice it to say that you will notice the difference in your life, your reactions, your perceptions – things that you didn’t feel possible will occur naturally – responses to triggers can disappear, or can feel less of a threat. The point is it can be as simple as waking up one day and noticing that you view the world differently. Putting your finger on the exact point doesn’t seem to be necessary – it just is.

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My Mother

April 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

My mother knew of my fathers antics, yet she didn’t stop him. I didn’t definitively know until one day about twelve years ago, during an innocuous conversation – the last conversation we ever had, she stated ‘you’ll never forgive me for what your father did will you?’ In that moment I fully realized that she knew and I let go of her. You can’t imagine the intense pain I felt inside – the betrayal – she was my mother! She was supposed to protect me, and love me, nurture me and teach me. I was never close to her though. She had a temper from hell and would lash out at us, verbally and physically. The point at which she admitted that final betrayal I ceased to love her. There are rules to being a mother and she broke all of them, not just the one about protecting your kids.

It hurt me because it meant another betrayal. Even though my life during my childhood was hell she was still my mother and I had thought that she would protect me if she had known. Reality tells me that it was an illusion I had created to protect myself, I just didn’t want to accept that I really didn’t have loving parents. I wanted to believe that it wasn’t true, even though the reality was there in front of me. I was clinging to the idea that it was the way it should have been. All I ever wanted was to feel loved, to please them, to feel a part of a family, and I never got that.

Through the past few years she has tried to contact me again through email and I have ignored her. She has tried emotional blackmail, telling me she will get to my children and tell them how much of a bad person I am; or telling me that she doesn’t have long to live, a month maybe, and that her dying wish is that I speak to her; telling me that I am unworthy, just like my father and always have been; telling me that people like me don’t deserve to be alive, that I am the trash of the earth; telling me that the way I disregard people is so hurtful, that no-one deserves to be treated that way. So, you get the picture, she is a manipulative person that doesn’t do well when she doesn’t get her own way. The sad thing is that all the things she said still hurt me. I haven’t quite understood that one yet, but I am addressing that now with my therapist. The sad thing is that it is just as hard to deal with her with my therapist, as it was dealing with my father.

My mother had always used her ‘techniques’ to gain compliance all through my childhood, and not just with me and my sister. She could feign illness well enough to fool doctors; she could reproduce certificates of qualification enough to buy a hair dressing business; she convinced the social workers of the town we lived in that she was qualified to work as a psychologist in a childrens home for disturbed kids – with her background as a mother how the hell did she get that one? These were just a few of her guises.

She was always ill, even recently telling me she has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheel chair; she has heart disease and numerous heart attacks; all of which I am now convinced are a lie.  I don’t know why she does this to herself, and then expects us to believe her. Surely by now she can see that everyone else moved on; everyone else that might have tried that tack somewhere in their lives found it didn’t work and moved on. It almost seems like she wants to be unhappy and she wants everyone to pity her – she has been a victim all her life and can’t see past that.

Her levels of manipulation never cease to amaze me, but the sad point is she still got to me, even though I didn’t answer the emails. I still read them and they still hurt me. Like my father, all I wanted was to be loved. I put him to rest but I haven’t yet put her to rest. I am unsure as to why I can’t let go. I don’t feel sorry for her; I don’t feel for her except maybe the anger of not allowing me to be a child, a son, to be nurtured the way a mother should.

I remember near mother’s day one year she was having a conversation with my sister about the qualities of a mother. My sister was reading a list of qualities that made a mother so special to a child and they both laughed as she read. I wasn’t laughing, I was crying. I was about twelve or thirteen but still the words stung. The things my mother was supposed to be, she was not and the more my sister read, the more it hurt, the more I cried, the more they laughed at me. In that moment I had a vague understanding of what I had missed from my mother, let alone my father. Even at that tender age I was fully aware of the sense of loss of finding out that I didn’t really have a mother that loved me. It was surreal and it was incredibly painful. How that came to me I’m not sure. We all know what the qualities of a mother are supposed to be so it should have been apparent to me. The look in her eyes, mocking me, almost taunting me told me she didn’t know how to be a mother, but more to the point, that she didn’t want to be.

I have scattered memories of her antics. She liked to drink and was worse for it if she did. Her temper was incredibly fiery and we lived in fear of upsetting her or making her angry. We were stuck between her rage, her blackmail and lies, and his abuse. She could go from violent rage to tearful – we could not seem to find the middle ground. No matter what we said or did, we were wrong. I’ll say that again – no matter what we said or did, we were wrong! Oh how that has chased me throughout my life. I still see the deranged look in her eyes when she would let loose her temper on me. I was the youngest and it always seemed to be my fault.

When I was in the military she invited me and two friends home for the weekend. She NEVER invited my friends home. One was male, one was female. On that first evening, after she had been drinking, she accused me outright of being gay in front of my friends. She pounded me with her words, humiliating me in front of them, relentlessly stabbing at me until I burst into tears. A twenty something military man that had seen war and not broken, and she had me in tears, crying like a child, in front of my friends. Another instance when I was younger, she had reheated some food that shouldn’t have been reheated. Our bathroom in that house was downstairs – we only had one! I only made it to the door of her bedroom before I threw up. She came out of the room and stepped in the mess. She turned and hit me so hard that I went over the railing and landed at the bottom of the stairs. She left me there and went back to bed. A few months later she had a nervous breakdown and blamed me for it. She sent me to the shop to buy dinner – fish and chips – and buy the time I got home it was cold. It was winter – what did she expect? She threw the food at me and went into a tirade of insults and swearing. This is sample of some of the things I can remember. There is so much sadness to having to remember it because there was no ‘get out’ clause. We couldn’t go to either parent about the other because both were abusive, and still no-one outside of the home could see any of this – or could they. You see how life was?

We kids learned at an early age that we had to fend for ourselves. We cooked and cleaned for them; we made them breakfast and coffee at the weekends; we kept them in coffee in the evenings; we were seen and not heard, and we daren’t do or say anything out of line for fear of punishment. That was the way life was, period.

A few months ago I started to write an email to her that I knew I wouldn’t send, but I had to get the words out of my head. After her last attempt at emotional blackmail I’d had enough. Here is what I wrote:

“I read through your email the first time and I was incensed. Then I remembered that this was your way of controlling people so I read it again. I noticed that, having not known me for over twelve years, you were making assumptions based on your reactions and your life, not mine. I noticed in the email trail that you have sent over the last few years that you had tried emotional blackmail, amongst other methods, and now you are trying to use a subconscious threat. It was an odd revelation knowing that I could finally see some of the methods you used to manipulate people, methods that you used so well on me as a child. It was almost comforting to think that the reason I had to fight myself so much was that you had trained me so well in how to not be normal.

The bitterness and nastiness in your words should bite deep, but they don’t, not anymore. I will not allow you to have any power or control over me or my life anymore. The threat you made of finding out where I work doesn’t worry me in the least. I have nothing to hide. If your aim is to bring me down then maybe you are the one that should look at your words and remember who you are. What happens if you succeed in finding me? For me nothing, because you cannot bring me down, even with your lies. Who is then delusional?”

I stopped at that point, it was hurting too much. I had seen her for what she was, again, and I wanted to tell her. If I sent the email she would have won because she said all she wanted was to know that I was alive. I refused to give her that satisfaction. In a way she is still winning because she still effects me. My reactions are learned, and she was the teacher. I’m now learning how much negative effect she had on me and it’s alarming, and very sad. I am working diligently with my therapist to unravel the lies and deceit, and the control I give her still. It’s a hard process and it feels harder than dealing with my father, and that hurts too. How can this be worse? It’s an open chapter that is in progress – it will take time but I am winning. But it’s so sad to realize fully the extent of both of their actions. I can’t cry yet – I hope to one day.

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