incest

The Journey

April 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

We all have our journeys in our lives. We all have our tales to tell and our high and low points; we all have our ‘private’ selves and our secrets, and we all have our lives to live regardless of the past. In all of this we often lose track of where we came from and how life became the way that it is. In the thrum of our adult lives we usually give little regard to the lessons of the past that have led us to who and where we are, because we believe we don’t need to. We have learned behaviors that help us cope with the monstrosity that life can be, but we also have learned behaviors that can dog us and cause us issues in our lives. We view the past as exactly that – the past. What if that journey wasn’t what you expected it to be, but that you had simply ‘forgotten’ the past? What if your childhood was hidden from plain sight? What if it started to come back, and in that moment your reality started to fall apart? The lessons learned in the formative years fall into question then, and life seems to take on a slant in the wrong direction. That realization, in itself, is enough to create imbalance, and that is where my journey begins.

I have journeyed hard and long into my past this last five years. I have journeyed back to the past to the things that my mind had hidden from me; to the events that had formed who I was; to the habits and coping mechanisms that had massive negative effects on me, but kept me alive none-the-less; to the memories of events that shouldn’t have happened and a new awareness of who I am not. Now it’s time to introduce you to that journey in the hope that it helps you on your journey, whatever that may be, and in the knowledge that it will help me. I started this journey alone. I am no longer alone. I am no longer weak. I was not responsible; I was not to blame; it was not my fault.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: incest, male survivor, My Inner Adult, recovery, sexual abuse, the journey, victim

How it began

April 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

I wrote a four page letter to someone I respect highly. In that four page letter I managed to encapsulate the essence of my journey to such a degree that the next chapter, ‘Path of Discovery’, is based on that letter. I thought it the perfect, poignant way to frame this journey; a rightful beginning to put a face to a monster that haunted my life for so many years yet lay hidden in the darkest corners of my mind. The words are very real, true to the point and true to the memory; a written graphic reminder of what was real – emphasis on ‘was’.

It’s hard to paint a picture when you have no canvas. Without the basic tools, no matter how talented you are, you cannot complete the picture. It will remain in your minds eye, unable to be expressed yet still ever present in your day to day life. In my view, without the nurturing of loving parents it is nigh on impossible to build and grow into a functional adult. The tools to build a young life towards adulthood are supplied mainly by those closest to you over those formative years – more to the point – your parents hold the key. Without them it becomes a guessing game; trial and error. Mistakes in this guessing game could destroy a life, literally and metaphorically. Hence the canvas mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph is foundation for building your life. What are your views if they are formed on lies?

The learning process for me, getting from then to now, has been incredible, hence calling it a journey. The transition from what I was to what I am is incredible also, almost like day and night, and it continues to morph and grow daily, yet I have a profound feeling that I am the same core person – I can’t tell you how comforting that one thought is. In dealing with the nightmare of my past I have opened new doors to a richer, happier life. I understand the strength necessary to take this journey, it is not easy, and I maintain that all survivors do have that strength they just don’t know how to access it yet. I also understand, with sadness, that there are those that don’t have the will to survive. There are those that either want to die to end the pain, or want to endure the pity of others and live a sad, lonely life. I don’t pity them, I hurt for them and, in my own way, understand them and wish I could give them the strength to make that change. That is not mine to give. Human nature can be cruel at times.

There is something in the core of everyone that yearns to survive and be happy. I believe that there can sometimes be something at the core of us that yearns to be a victim. Maybe that yearning is our subconscious mind playing out coping mechanisms. Maybe that yearning is familiarity, better the devil we know so to speak. Maybe that yearning is a misplaced and misunderstood emotion or response that grips us like a vice. Maybe I have missed the point entirely, who knows. It’s not my place to do anything other than express my own feeling right here, right now.

Who knows how anyone else perceives the world around them. Who knows whether the color that I know as red looks the same as the color you know as red. Who’s to say that my perception of how a life should be is anything other than just that, my perception. In the grand scheme of things, in the myriad dimensions of thought, life and of the universe there is so much that we don’t know, that we don’t comprehend that it almost seems impossible to comprehend the scale of what our minds can achieve – we don’t know – we really don’t know. The scale of that thought is part of what kept me alive during my childhood. The chapter called ‘The Box’ goes some way to explain the scale of my thought.

Reading through the chapter ‘Reflection on What Was’ will give you an idea of where I was when I started this process of healing. It’s brutally honest and to the point and can be somewhat disturbing, even though I still feel I couldn’t adequately describe the gravity of how I felt and what I was going through. Beyond that point in time is the journey in more detail, from a different standpoints and perspectives and, some would say, from a different person. I remain the same core person; my perspective has changed – my life has changed, almost polar opposites. I learned to love, and be loved, and that is one of the greatest gifts that there is. There is hope – no matter how deep the crap is, no matter how thick the fog is we can beat this. Don’t be alone in your pain – do what I did and become a winner.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: how it began, incest, male survivor, My Inner Adult, recovery, sexual abuse, victim

It’s all about me

April 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

The content of this blog is entirely my view. This is entirely my perception. These are my words, my thoughts and my experiences. I don’t claim to be right. I don’t claim to be anything other than one man sharing his experiences, ideas and thoughts with those that might listen; no more and no less. To think any different is to misinterpret my intention. To misinterpret my intention is to misinterpret me, and that doesn’t belong with me anymore.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: all about me, incest, male survivor, recovery, sexual abuse, victim

Path of Discovery

April 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

(a letter to a friend)

I would like to share with you my path towards healing and hopefully give you an insight to the spirit of ‘me’ that has aided my journey. It’s not an easy thing to write and it will not be an easy thing for you to read. In understanding my words I hope that you will better understand the real me, my journey, and why the journey means so much to me. The journey is just as important as the goal; the journey is the struggle towards a normal life; the journey is a Path of Discovery.

It’s hard to know where to begin. There is so much information, so much life that I have lived, or not as the case may be. There is a paragraph by Charles Swindoll called Attitude, and a text called Mastery by Stewart Emery that are both so very powerful and pertinent messages and have such deep meaning for me, more so if you have been where I have been and seen what I have seen. In my journey towards becoming whole again I have often pondered the meaning of both texts. Now that I am on the other side of the curve I better understand them. It is easy to read the words and know the meaning. It is not so easy to truly understand and feel the meaning, let alone live by it. Any journey such as mine reminds you of that fact.

In the forty something years leading me to ‘here’ and ‘now’, I have been so many people and seen so many places (yes, I meant to say it that way), and I have been in awe of life itself so many times, but never as much or as such as I am right now, right here in this moment that I am sharing with you. It is time to let loose the past and in doing so, embrace the future. It’s an incredible journey to say the least, and it has left its mark.

In late 2004 I began a journey of discovery. My blanketed past had so many jaded edges that I could not understand, memories that didn’t belong let alone make sense, and flashbacks to events I didn’t even know occurred. I knew that my childhood was hard and I knew that it was not a loving time for me, but I had no real concept of what really went on, just many fast and loud memories that would haunt me in my sleep and shadow my life. Not knowing what they were, they remained in the darkened corners of my mind where they ate at my spirit every hour of every day. To understand them I had to wake up to something I had been denying. To wake up I had to acknowledge my past. To acknowledge my past I had to remember, and I did not want to remember.

As I grew weaker through illness more memories came to the surface. These were disturbing images and emotions that I couldn’t quite grasp. The more I remembered, the harder I pushed my body when training, and the sicker I got. Five hours of surgery served to remind me how frail the human body really is. I was also diagnosed with narcolepsy during this time and the only saving grace of that was the ability to sleep within three minutes of lying down. At least that would mask the trail of memories and cosset me from the sharp edges of my past by giving me some rest.

It was a time of reflection, a time of discovery indeed, but in that discovery laid the reasons for my life mistakes; answers to questions I longed to ask and understand, and memories of events that no one should ever see. This was the truth of where I came from. It was killing me, literally and metaphorically.

I knew the past held something I did not want to remember. I knew that something was hiding in my subconscious and had to come out. I consciously chose to face the past head on. I chose to pull the memories to the front of my mind where I could deal with them. I knew that it would be a trying time and I knew that it would hurt me but I also knew that my survival was dependant on truth, honesty and integrity. I could only give myself truth if I was true to myself and faced the ghosts of my past; faced the true reality that was buried in my past. My very limited memory of childhood afforded me no real clues. That, in itself was a clue.

I couldn’t look in the mirror and say ‘I know you, I understand you and I love you’ to myself. I was living in a world that I had subconsciously created to cushion myself from my reality. As I grew up I had no concept of what was supposed to be real so I did something to help myself. I watched those around me and copied the parts of them that I liked. I modeled successful people. I built my life around what I saw around me and I adapted, added, took away and altered what I saw to adapt myself to my current surroundings. I joined the military at age sixteen and served twelve years for Queen and country. I buried myself in my duty to defend my country. I had purpose and was growing and learning, always knowing that my superiors controlled my life. That was the key, not controlling my own life. Was that a subconscious decision I wonder? I built the person I wanted to be from what I saw and experienced but I knew, still, that I wasn’t whole.

For the longest time the coping mechanism I had forged worked in my favor. For the longest time I thought I was happy and perhaps, in a way, I was; but in reality I was hiding from the one thing that should have been important, and that was the real ‘me’. I could feel the past tugging at me at every corner and the weakness was gnawing away at my mind, my body and my spirit. The only way forward was to go back but it had to be the right time, the right place and with the right people.

I told my closest friends of my decision and of my reasoning. I asked them if they understood because I have tried to face this in the past but I could not do this alone. In the past those around me chose to ignore and rebuff me through their own ignorance, their own fear and their own sense of disgust which was aimed at me even though they knew it wasn’t my fault. Therein lies a truth, it wasn’t my fault. Their fear of my past was aimed at me. In reality I should have known that my true friends would stand by me. They are still standing by me through all the memories that I have had to face since deciding to confront this. This being the faceless monster that has tried to kill me, tried to deface me and had taken away my capacity to love and be loved, and had denied me my self esteem. My spirit was dying and it had to stop.

Through countless sessions with a counselor I furrowed into the memories. Each time I saw a little more and my heart died a little. I knew it would get worse before it got better but I wasn’t ready for the sheer gravity of events and emotions that would follow. Each time I remembered I withdraw from my reality in anger, shock and disgust. Each morsel offered me an insight into why I was the way I was and why I reacted the way I did, and then that same reality stabbed me in the back when I wasn’t looking and tried to steal another part of me away. Each memory was an answer to a question on human nature and a lesson in my capacity to evolve, and each memory gnawed at my reasons for living. Through all this my body weakened and my demeanor became stooped and low. My friends still loved me and tried to help, but I withdrew from that reality and lived a daily existence. All this time no-one really knew the depth of my pain, no-one knew the truth, but those close to me tried to support me. I trained harder still to focus myself somewhere constructive. I knew if I could master my situation I could evolve, learn and move on. I knew that to challenge the past I had to master the present. That would afford me the strength to carry on. I just didn’t know how.

Early 2005 I chose to tell my story to some close friends. I chose to not hide the details from them and I chose to ask for their help in my journey. I asked them all to not share any information, knowing that if this leaked out it would do irreparable damage to my foundation, to my being, to my soul, the very part of me that I was trying to regain; or that was how I perceived it. I risked losing them in my insular knowledge of how others had rejected me from not understanding my past, but I knew it had to be done. None of them flinched or judged me. They are still my pillars of support, my true family and they have stood by me through thick and thin. Through all that has happened I have felt a bond that will never be broken.

Now I choose to open my heart to you and let you see the real me. I choose to share with you the reality of my life, past and present. This I do with my head held high. This I do not only for you, but for me. There is no shame, it wasn’t my fault.

Here I am: my father was a leader in the community and someone that demanded and got respect. My mother was a psychologist in a hostel for wayward teenage children. My father sexually abused me for ten long, empty years, my earliest memory being at age three and last at age thirteen. That was when I finally fought back. Once, he threw me in the deep end of a swimming pool at age five and walked away … I couldn’t swim. The look on his face as he walked away burned into my memory and became my nightmare. He knew what he had done. Had a kind soul not pushed me to the side I believe I would have drowned. He knew that, I saw it in his eyes. If I made any noise during his sexual advances I was beaten for betraying him. My mother would attack me in a drunken rage, sometimes for what appeared to be no apparent reason but, as I found out later in life, she attacked me because she knew what he was doing and somehow blamed me for it. There was too much in this for it to be real I was told, and that is what I told myself. I had a vague perception that I must have been very naughty to be punished this way, and that God must not have loved me to let this happen.

The general perception around me was that there was no way that these wonderful parents would ever be capable of such atrocities. I was called a liar by my family and rebuked by anyone and everyone that I tried to tell. I didn’t live, I didn’t even exist, I just ‘was’. I didn’t cry nor love. I didn’t speak much at all. I was painfully shy, very, very sad and very scared. I had a dream world that I had created to focus myself on. No one else mattered there. I had the place [in my mind] that I went when my father wanted to use me and I went there often to hide. To cope I had to master leaving my body behind. I had to take my mind to a place where it didn’t connect to the real world, that way I felt no physical pain. That way I was safe from him. He could defile my body but he would never get my mind. I created my reality as I went along and believe I survived because of it. I would wonder in awe at the size of the universe and immerse myself in the dream world of science. I saw myself from a distance. My body was on the bed but my mind was in a box, floating in space, free from him and free from pain. I still using similar coping mechanisms today, but only to release myself from stress.

My father had made me feel like it was my fault and that I deserved what he did to me. He had told me that he would love me if I let him have his way so I let him, time and time again, because all I wanted was for him to love me. There were days when I begged God to take me away and make me whole because surely he wouldn’t want me to stay there and suffer. If he took me to heaven someone would love me and I wouldn’t have to hurt anymore. I didn’t realize the impact of my thoughts. I couldn’t fathom the gravity of where I was. I was too young.

The memories surfaced one by one over an eighteen month period. More and more information came forward and from that, more and more pain and anguish in my heart for that little boy. I hated myself for what had happened even though I knew it wasn’t my fault. I felt used and dirty, even in the memory. There have been times when I wished that I could go to sleep and not wake up because in that sleep there would be calm; the noise, the pain and the memories would stop and I would be at peace. It would be an eternal peace. No, it wasn’t suicide or a cry for help. It was a wanton desire to be at peace, misguided by too many memories that occurred too often, and was offset knowing that the world around me, as I saw it, was based on someone I didn’t really know [me]; and that the world around me watched as I suffered at the hands of my parents and did nothing. Not one person stepped forward to rescue that little boy. He was utterly alone and that thought hurt me so much.

I fought through memories that no one should ever see, in so much graphic detail that I almost felt it again but this time the person being defiled was the adult ‘me’. With the help of my friends, and a therapist that refused to let me give up, I faced the past, I lived it again. Every Thursday morning I would enter a room with a therapist and I would fight for my life. I would force myself to recount the horror and then rebuild myself after it. My therapist would walk me through the things I saw and felt and then gently bring me back into the real world. She would never let me face them alone. She never once judged me.

The honest truth is that I nearly didn’t make it. The gravity of the past was so heavy that I wanted to give up. I couldn’t deal with the emotional turmoil that I felt and I couldn’t hide from any of it. I was at an impasse that had no escape and despite the support I had I could see no end to it. The fibers of my life were being torn apart. Someone literally turned the light at the end of the tunnel off. Suddenly that metaphor meant much more than it ever had. My body was failing and my mind was full of self pity. I had cursed myself by trying to face something that was bigger than me, or so I thought.

Through all this turmoil I had to maintain my career, and kept training and teaching martial arts. My sanity was teaching. My mood would break the minute I entered the floor and I was free, confident, happy, and I felt wanted, even respected. I managed my career as a separate entity to the person suffering the past. That way I could detach and maintain, but it was getting very difficult to stop the memories from intruding to both work and training.
I had to rebuild myself in spite of the memories. Everything that I felt was so raw that I suddenly realized that those were the real emotions, and that I had lied to myself about how I felt up until that point. I was new, like a child in an adult’s body. I was a child with an inner adult. I was starting the growing up process again because all that I was up until that point was built around a lie, and was built by a child to protect himself from the pain that was his life. It was finally time to grow up.

My spirit was tested to the end of its limits through all of the memories. I had an inner strength that I didn’t know existed, stronger than I thought possible that grew stronger every day. My friends have stood by me while I fought. My life has begun again. I am learning to love and be loved and I grow each and every day, and evolve each and every moment that I live. I always knew life was special, I just never thought I would experience it. Even as a child I could see it, I could smell it and touch it and taste it, but I knew that I could not have it. Life makes no sense when you don’t have the tools to work through it, tools that are taught with love and nurturing as a child grows up and touches the reality of life.

I have grown beyond the past now. I see it for what it was. I accept it as a part of me and I am stronger in spite of it. Within me the fire burns brighter and stronger than I have ever felt. I forgave myself for the sins of the past, and in doing so released all those years of burden from my shoulders. I have won that battle. I still cannot forgive him. I’m not sure I ever will. I have been told that to forgive is to finally let go – maybe I am just not ready for that finality yet.

In the vain of mastering the present, I give you these words and in giving you these words I bear my soul to you. It is with great respect that I offer you my journey towards personal mastery. I am who I am in spite of my past, not because of it. I learned that the hard way, but learned it none the less. My journey is just beginning and my life is anew. My health returns slowly and my strength builds as my mind matures beyond the past. I am ready; I am willing; I am free.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: 2. Path of Discovery, incest, inner adult, male survivor, recovery, sexual abuse, victim

A little about me

April 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

It’s all about me. In this post it is ‘I’.

I am not old. I am 45 years old at the time of writing, an executive in a fast paced, multi-faceted, high tech company. My career is trying, extremely stressful but is successful and I have a great salary, a beautiful house and a fast car – ironic isn’t it? More importantly now, I have a caring, loving and committed partner who accepts me for all that I am, and all that I am not. That, in itself, is priceless. That makes it all worthwhile. I know I can love, and I know I can be loved. That is huge!

I write music. I use music as a lever to express what I am feeling. I can lose myself in the music and music can affect me; my emotions; my being. I am self taught; I am passionate in it; it is a reflection of me –plus it’s fun of course.

I am a black belt. The discipline of martial arts helps me to control aggression and release it if need be, not necessarily using violence or force. Teaching martial arts allows me to express myself in a forum of control, and I teach with passion.

I’m a geek! I love computers and tech toys. I am the ultimate child when it comes to technology, never growing up, never wanting to grow up. With computers I can write music, I can design graphics, web sites and can express myself in so many ways. It is a form of freedom that is in my control and I can lose myself in it.

I’m narcoleptic. I was diagnosed only a couple of years ago. Narcolepsy is a condition and not a disease. I wonder sometimes if the narcolepsy developed as a mechanism to protect me from the horrors of my past, but there are no facts to support that. During the process of healing, learning and change it served me well. It takes an average of three minutes for me to fall asleep and I tend to stay asleep. There are other symptoms, some of which can be very trying, but so is life.

I’m hyper-vigilant. Day to day my brain is active all the time. I am constantly thinking, analyzing and multi tasking; running scenarios and occasionally daydreaming. It is hard for me to relax; it is hard for me to switch off but I am learning. It has been said that I hear and see more than most. I see it that I am more aware of my surroundings and it served to keep me alive after I left home. Perhaps that is also a part of creativity, who knows.

The journey. My view is that the journey never ends. Once beyond the hold of the past it becomes a process of learning and growing. It can still be painful; emotions seem new and raw, but it is exciting to be so alive without the encumbrances of the past weighing you down and trying to draw you in. The past will still be there and it will still affect me, but now I know what it is and I am well prepared to deal with it.

There’s a child in me. I still believe I look through the eyes of a child. Sometimes my partner tells me that I have a childish quality, good or bad, in an action or reaction. He sees it as an endearing quality, being able to embrace the child that we all hold inside. I believe that we are in too much of a rush to grow up and be ‘adult’, and that the child in us has to have a voice. Denying all parts of who we are can stop us reaching our full potential in life I think.

This is me – so much more than I was!

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: 2. Path of Discovery, incest, inner adult, male survivor, recovery, sexual abuse, victim

Surviving

April 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Surviving was not easy, though in my mind it was what I thought to be a routine – it was normal for me after all. My world did not look the same as everyone elses, or at least my perception of my world. My world was created as a young child without an adequate template to form life skills with. Without being nurtured and loved as a child I had no basis to form normal emotional bonds. My own views, thoughts and opinions had no real grounding other than the perception of what I saw around me, and the adaptation of that. Without being adequately prepared for the realities of the world around me it could be a dangerous and alien place. I felt isolated because I felt I was different, but I didn’t know why. All I knew is that I felt lonely and unloved.

Devoid of love and without a friend in the world [my perception] the reality of it weighed heavily on me, even though I didn’t understand the true nature of what I felt. I remember sadness and I remember loneliness. I remember wondering why no-one liked me or loved me. I couldn’t work out what I was doing wrong that made people push me away. I thought I had done something wrong. Maybe I was pushing them away! I was being punished and no matter what I did, I seemed to do it wrong. I didn’t know that my parents had a huge hand in that -until now.

Life without the capacity to love and be loved is bitter and painfully lonely, let alone thinking that no-one could ever love me because of my secret. I was used goods, marred and unworthy of love – or at least that is the feeling I had. Did I need to write it that dramatically? I think so, because the impact on you is never going to be as profound – but you can get an idea of what it was like.

My perception of self helped drill that negativity deep into my being and I truly, truly believed it. Even if one person should deem me worthy enough to hang on to they would drop me like a stone once they realized where I came from, or I would drop them like a stone if they got too close to the real ‘me’; they could never see the real ‘me’. That was the perception I had. The real ‘me’ was unclean. In creating that image I created that reality. I was sealing my own fate but I thought I needed to do that to protect myself.

Along the way I encountered many parts of my being that I didn’t know or understand, almost like it wasn’t me, like it was a nightmare; or that I was playing out a role that I had no control over. I developed separate thought processes for different situations knowing that I could detach that persona to do the task or job at hand. I never saw it as anything other than a different way of dealing with different situations. I would watch that persona do its work, sometimes looking out from inside the mask of the adult, looking through the two holes that showed me the outside world [my eyes]. Detaching from reality was easy and to survive in the real world I had to do just that. Most people can flow from one persona to another – from father to husband for instance, I could not; but then I didn’t know I was supposed to and I didn’t know how.

As I delved deeper into despair my past began leaking into my present. I wrote my thoughts and fragmented memories down and relived them through my words. I remembered them through those words and tried to rationalize them through the tireless efforts of my therapist, and hard work from the real me that was hidden underneath my fragmented life. The old adage ‘it has to get worse before it gets better’ really hit home. Therein lies a question: how well do you really know yourself? You have to wonder at the depths your mind will go to protect you, and to build your life so that it makes a little sense at least.

Integrating this process of discovery into my perception of the real world came at a price. I was always hyper-aware of everything around me. I could hear individual conversations, or feel the hum of the crowd. I could pick out key words from conversations around me. I would see every tiny change in the picture of the world around me. I heard, felt and saw everything around me, and that we very tiring. I hated being around people but I needed people to survive. Later in life I chose to be alone most of the time. It was the only way I could maintain quiet in my world. A locked door was my safety; silence was my solace; memory was my foe. I switched off.

I still harbor a lot of anger inside me. I sometimes still have issues integrating into the world around me. People anger me with their lack of concern for anyone but themselves. It’s a conceited and self opinionated world we live in. I often wonder at the complexity of society against the simplicity of being humble. So much could be achieved, but I suppose that is just a dream. Each day is a new beginning to me and that is how I cope and move forward. I still get hit with seemingly random moods. Some of the stupidest little things will cause a memory to unfold, or a pain to reappear. That is a daily fight that I have grown accustomed to. My life will unfold as I progress through the memories, even as I write this, but I am no longer facing this alone and I am no longer scared of it.

I will try to recount the stories and memories and try to explain them as I go along, as well as my reactions, perceptions, thoughts, fears and emotions. I will share them in the vain they were written because to share them any other way would decry the meaning of that moment, and that moment belongs to me, was empowered by me and in doing this discovery, has helped me heal.

Some of the stories still hurt me to remember but no matter how profound or destructive they are, they have a place in my life, and a place in my heart. The more I see them, the more I acknowledge them, the more I understand them. For that part relinquishes me of blame and helps free me to move on. For the most part there is no shock left in them for me. The fear part is rationalized and the understanding part is in place. I just need practice at being ‘me’.

As I try to rationalize the in-between moments and the thoughts that I don’t yet understand I will write in that moment. Maybe I will be able to win a battle or two just by writing this, who knows. I know this journey will never end because life constantly evolves and changes, and my perception of that also evolves and changes. I learn with every interaction, with every word and with every day. Maybe sometimes those lessons are hard learned, but at least now I am learning. As I said earlier, I am who I am in spite of my past, not because of it. Is that the true definition of surviving?

I find that the word ‘surviving’ can have so many different meanings. It can be the difference between sanity and insanity if you will. To survive in the aspect of a victim of childhood sexual abuse is to exist day to day. It implies no joy, just heartache and pain, fragmented memories and confusion. Yet to survive an accident is a good thing. What I make of it now is that I was the former up until I took control of my life. I had a daily existence shrouded in confusion, loneliness and self pity; obviously counter productive. Now I see the latter. I have survived a bad thing, maybe not an accident but something that I see as just as harmful. Maybe in that knowledge is a reminder that perception can be an illusion, or should that state that perception can be the illusion?

Charles Swindoll wrote a well known text pertaining to Attitude. It’s simple enough to read and it’s quite true in its message. Sometimes when I read it I see the simplicity of it. After all, it is something that we can grasp. It reads:

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important that facts.

It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how to react to it. And so it is with you, we are in charge of our attitudes.

He is right. There is one thought in my mind though, and it’s not casting aspersions at the text for I truly believe in what he says. Are we really that aware of ourselves that we can apply this thought process? Part of the thought is redeemed in the first line “The longer I live …”. Is this implying that impact of attitude dawns on us with maturity perhaps, or just life experience, perhaps both? I’m not sure if we fully understand the chemistry of thought, bearing in mind that we are told that chemical imbalances in the brain cause moods, depression and such. Are we really in charge of that? Can we control that? I think there is a sub conscious part of us (instinct?) that controls our perception of the world around us and the drive to be a part of it. It’s a feeling if you will; it is a guttural drive, desire, urge, instinct or whatever you want to call it. You can’t fake it, you can’t pretend it, it either is, or it isn’t. Is our spirit strong enough to affect our chemical balance, indeed can our subconscious control it? I think the point here for me is that there are multiple ways at looking at the will to survive. A ‘for instance’ is suicide. It can be a cry for help. Desperation leads to drastic measures that can actually be rationalized by a confused mind. Flip the coin over and suicide for some is the intent. They actually want to die. Maybe that doesn’t make much sense to you, but it does to me. I literally saw both sides of that coin and felt the inner calm of the latter, and I don’t say that lightly. Suicide will make the pain stop – and sometimes all I wanted was the pain to stop.

In essence I really believe that change can be held back by the mind, subconsciously – but I also think there is an element of wanting what is familiar – people resist change. Is it reasonable to believe that I could develop to be more of an adult now that I have rationalized my past? Maybe that is the part that moves beyond surviving. In reality discovering that there is actually a child within me is the revelation. Allowing that child to exist and play relieves me of so much of the stress of what life is really like. Allowing myself the right to feel whatever I am feeling is empowering – knowing that it is real is almost scary. Being able to justify myself to myself is a huge step forward. All of this is surviving, and beyond. There has to be a moment where we say that we are beyond that point. We aren’t surviving anymore, we are living. To say it is simple; to understand the concept is a step forward; to truly feel it is empowering.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: 4. Surviving, childhood, incest, sexual abuse

My Therapist

April 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

During the time that I was trying to come to terms with my past I knew that I had to get help. There was a tremendous amount of fear involved in that decision but I ‘knew’ (instinct?) it had to be done. There was a huge amount of trepidation in involving someone else in my mess. My thought was that this mess was far too large for someone else to understand. There were so many angles and tangents the even I didn’t know were related to it that I thought it impossible to untangle the mess. No-one could surely know what I had been through, nor comprehend the many years of suffering it had given me, not unless they had been there too. If I can’t fathom it and I am in it, how can others? I had tried to face it once before and had failed badly. I was an enigma to the professionals that were working with me. The emphasis for them was to study me and I felt somewhat like a zoo animal. I thought the emphasis was supposed to be to help me? They didn’t take to time to listen to me and spent most of the time asking questions and not listening to the answers. They were intent on making me take medications, and I didn’t want that. I felt more isolated and lost in a sea of people that could never possibly understand. They wanted to document me, publicly, the worst thing they could have done to me, in my mind. I fought the process and I faded back into solitude, and closed the door on the world again – this time the olive branch wasn’t there anymore. During that failed attempt I lost faith in the system that I thought was supposed to be there for me. It wasn’t there to support me. I felt like it was there to get them fame in their profession, or so my mind had convinced me. Inward was the only solace I knew. It was safe, to some degree.

In my mind I knew that whomever I chose this time around had to be female, extremely tolerant and be able to handle some of the sexual issues that I was going through at the time, and had been through in the past. I remember feeling trepidation thinking that no-one had the capacity to understand me, let alone understand my past; that I was going to be judged again by others; that I deserved the past and the effects it had on the present – even though I had the notion that wasn’t the reality of it. I didn’t think it was possible to see the full picture without judging me. I didn’t think it was possible to understand me at all because of my past and because of the mess I had made in my mind. My thought process said that if you haven’t experienced being a victim of same sex sexual abuse, there is no way that you could understand what it feels like, or even know the ramifications of the actions. Shallow that may be, but that is the way it was for me, even though part of my intellect screamed otherwise. I didn’t know that it was normal to feel that way. I didn’t know that you don’t have to have been through it to understand it enough to help. There was a part of me that had to let it out or I deemed I would not survive for much longer. I had no concept that someone would actually care.

An internet search of sex therapists turned up a few names. I called a few – one was not taking new patients; another didn’t return my call and the last two didn’t make me feel comfortable in telling them what I was facing. I’m not saying that was there fault, that was just my perception. I didn’t want to provide too much detail on the first call and I felt like I was being probed. I didn’t feel comfortable talking with them and they didn’t seem comfortable talking with me, or that was my perception. I had left a message for one last therapist.

When she called me I was caught off guard. I had to transition from the corporate ‘me’ to the victim ‘me’ in a place that was not meant to mix the two. I remember walking outside the office to the tree lined street trying hard not to talk too loud in case someone heard me. I don’t remember off hand how I described the situation but I know that the intimation was enough of a clue to let her know what she was up against. She was up against ‘me’ and the vision of ‘me’ that I held for so many years. I do remember that I wasn’t guarded toward her and I didn’t feel prone while she was asking questions. We arranged to meet – could it be that simple?

I don’t have much memory of how we started the first few sessions. I don’t remember how I outlined what was going on. I was intently embarrassed knowing what I had to tell her but she always kept me at ease. I would say I couldn’t tell her because it was so wrong, or perverted, or dirty and she wouldn’t blink, wouldn’t waiver but more to the point, wouldn’t push. I tried hard not to retreat back into myself; I tried hard not to let how I felt show and I tried hard to be as honest as I could. Even then, sometimes, I still hid the truth; I still hid the true impact of what I was feeling. I have always had a sense that I don’t want to burden anyone else with my issues, and that cosseting the truth would take the pain out of the blow. I still do that a little now – but now I know why. Now I know also that she knew I was holding back.

I remember the memories coming more and more to the front of my mind during the sessions, and the feeling of frustration and being a lost cause being more and more apparent to me. I knew it would get worse before it got better but I didn’t think it would hit me as hard as it did. I was wrong. I underestimated the power of the past and its affect on my whole life up until that point. Hidden memories crept forward. Old memories that seemed short or cut off in the past expanded to full ‘scenes’ if you like. In getting the full picture, the full memory, I was killing myself because, after all the years of hiding I had to admit that it did happen and worse still, that there was more. I was lost in a deep, dark place that I thought I would never crawl out of. I could feel the tears inside. I could hear myself screaming on the inside. I was crying inside but the tears wouldn’t come out. A couple of times they would crack the surface and a tear of two would come, but that was it. I wasn’t fighting for control, it just never happened – a learned behavior maybe. Sorting through so many memories and issues, and trying to make sense of emotions that I didn’t know how to deal with seemed to be making it harder to survive each day, and felt like it made it harder to move forward. There was so much to be said and done, more and more as I remembered. For a time I was sure I was going crazy. I didn’t think it could get any worse.

It did get worse, much worse. You will read some of it in the chapter ‘Reflection on What Was’. All through this, through the betrayals I felt during the process; during the times when I wanted the world to swallow me up; during the times I wanted to die to stop the hurting; during the intense sexual acting out, she maintained her approach and stood by me; maintained her demeanor and held my words for me so that I didn’t get lost in them. She touched me in her ability to soften the feeling around me enough for it to be okay. I never felt judged and if I flinched at something she said she would catch it and ask me if she had upset me; or ask me what my reaction was and why. Sometimes she did upset me and I would try to explain why. Sometimes I would lie; always I would try to be honest but still some of the memories hurt too much to say; or the depravity that I felt at some of my actions was so deep I couldn’t tell her. I knew she would listen and I knew she wouldn’t judge me, but still I could not let them go.

The transitions and stages of what I could to see was recovery started to become measurable. I can’t tell you when I noticed it, but I noticed it. I could say to myself and to her that I knew I was healing. I started to see the conditions that I set on my life change and morph and free me to experience the next process, thought, idea or emotion. I had epiphanies about natural reactions, nurturing thoughts and emotions and allowed them to come and go. Without restricting them I could understand the sensations more and emotions more, all within the safety of the therapy. Without that safety net there was a chance I could lose myself in them – I deemed that as dangerous.

As the road unraveled itself, so I noticed that emotions, sensations and thoughts even, were new; new in the sense that I hadn’t let myself feel or understand them before. I had always told myself how I would feel and would act that out. Finding out the true power of emotions was an eye opener, and I felt somewhat like a child learning to control emotional responses again. Some discoveries were intense reminders of how I had controlled not only my emotions, but physical sensation too. I didn’t realize quite how much control I had over physical sensation. I know that my mood would dictate how much pain I could take, but I was becoming aware that I could actually tell myself not to feel pain. It would still be there so in reality I could still feel it, but I would not acknowledge it therefore it wouldn’t hurt as much.

I have come a long, long way since starting this process. I acknowledge that the work was done by me with the guidance of my therapist – just stating that fact took a lot of effort – knowing that fact is intensely satisfying. I acknowledge that what happened to me wasn’t my fault but I also acknowledge that I have faults, just like every other human being. I also know the power of coping mechanisms and learned behaviors and have learned that sharing them with my therapist, no matter how stupid I think they are, helps me to understand them. Letting go of the past a small piece at a time has freed up my mind to experience some new and wonderful things, such as love. I don’t dwell on the loss of who I was in the past anymore because I have many good memories beyond my parents, and I still believe that the core of ‘me’ is the same, it is my perception that has changed. I grew to who I am despite the past and not because of it. I acknowledge that my sexuality is who I am and was not created by the abuse. There were times during the abuse when I would get an erection, and that led me to believe that I deserved or wanted it. I know different now. I know that can be involuntary. There are many more acknowledgments and lessons learned. There are many more to go but I am voluntarily in the game now, and learning and growing with it.

By her care and attention to me and my needs my therapist allowed me to develop beyond my grief, anger, pain and suffering to the person I am now, and am becoming in the future. The core person, the core of who I am is the same. The foundation of ‘me’ never changed. The perception of who I was and where I came from did change. Giving myself permission to be, to feel, to understand and to grow was surreal. Giving myself permission to be angry and hurt at the past was also an eye opener. I’m not sure that the process can be totally defined because everyone is different; each case or circumstance is different, as is each therapist. It is my comfort level that I was thinking about and worried about at the beginning. It was my need to be heard and not judged. My therapist guided me through that process of learning and helped me see beyond my anger and beyond my grief. There were times when I thought that my suffering was hurting her and I would pull back. She would spot that and we would talk. She would accept responsibility for her emotions and would tell me that was her choice. It’s so very hard to want to tell, but not want to hurt others by your words, and it took constant reassurance from her for me to get to a point where I would consider my feelings first. Even now sometimes I will say that someone else deserves happiness, and she will always say that I do too. It’s hard to learn to think about your own feelings when you have spent most of your life negating attention to yourself.

Choosing the right therapist for my needs was hard. Knowing that I had to face the past with a stranger was even harder. First you have to want to heal, and that is a big part of the battle. If you can accept that, you are on your way. The other part of that is how much of yourself that you are willing to put in front of the therapist. I chose a female therapist because of my lack of trust of men. Maybe I even feared a male therapist, who knows. The point is that I chose my therapist because I felt comfortable with her after the first phone call, let alone the first session. She is as much part of my healing as I am because she became my guide, helping me walk through the maze that was my life. She guides and never controls, and that is what I needed.

I’m not trying to extol her beyond the reality of the situation, although my personal belief is that she is the best because she helped me, but it started with me, as it can start with you. You just have to want it! The saddest thing to me is that some victims don’t want help.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: incest, sexual abuse, survivor, therapist

Understanding Emotions

April 9, 2009 By admin 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.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: 11. Understanding Emotions, incest, same sex sexual abuse, survivor, victim

The Process of Adjustment

April 9, 2009 By admin 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.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: 4. Surviving, incest, male survivor, process of adjustment, sexual abuse

A Misguided Trust

April 10, 2009 By admin 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.

Filed Under: My Inner Adult Tagged With: 4. Surviving, date rape, incest, same sex sexual abuse, sexual abuse, trust

The Journey

How it began

It’s all about me

Path of Discovery

A little about me

Surviving

My Therapist

Understanding Emotions

The Process of Adjustment

A Misguided Trust

Chapters

Categories