Childhood Sexual Abuse Links

It has been awhile since I have shared very many links from other blogs with you. Here are some that have been helpful to me lately:

1.  Triggers; what are they and how do we work through them? @
      http://survivorsjustice.com/2014/02/26/triggers-what-are-they-and-how-do-we-work-through-them/

2.  What I Wish I Had Known @
     http://speak4change.com/blogging/what-i-wish-i-had-known/

3.  15 Things I Wish I'd Known About Grief @
     http://identityrenewed.com/2013/11/21/15-things-i-wish-id-known-about-grief/

4.  Grooming - How Do Sexual Abuse Predators Get Into Our Lives? @
     http://together-we-heal.org/2013/06/17/grooming-how-do-sexual-predators-get-into-our-lives/

5.  Intimate Partner Violence @
     http://www.butterflydreamsabuserecovery.com/intimate_partner_violence.html#.Uxu474WtyYF


6.  Adolescent Male Victims Of Sexual Abuse - The Psychological Effects @
     http://whatislove-2010.blogspot.com/2014/01/adolescent-male-victims-of-sexual-abuse.html

7.  Incest Survivors United Voices of America @
     http://www.isuvoa.com/

I know the Intimate Partner Violence article and the article about Grief aren't about Childhood Sexual Abuse as the name of the blog post says but they could be in the life of a survivor. As children being abused, you have much grieving to do in the healing process. Every time an issue comes up to be healed, you start the healing with facing the grief that comes up because of the losses in your childhood. Many of us who are sexually abused also grow up with Domestic Violence in our homes. Many grow up to live with intimate partner violence because of your poor sense of self-worth that says you don't deserve better treatment from your loved ones.
Patricia    

No Tears for my Father: a true story of incest Book Review

Viga Boland is an online friend that I met because we are both advocates for ourselves and for other survivors of incest. When I heard that Viga was writing her memoir, No Tears for my Father: a true story of incest, I told her I wanted to read it and would do a book review afterwards.

As Viga says on the back of her book " 'Victims' own voices are the best weapons against child sexual abuse.' " In some ways, Viga tells my story. In others, Viga's story is distinctly her own and no one else's, as is true for all survivor stories. No Tears for my Father comes with a Trigger Warning Advisory for the safety of those incest survivors who may experience flashbacks or emotional pain from reading the sometimes graphic scenes of Viga's memories.

Viga Boland was born in Australia in 1946. Like many children of the 1940's and 1950's, Viga was taught by her parents to do what the adults in her life told her to do. It didn't matter who the adult was, they were in control if you were a child. This one rule, above all others, made it easy for Viga to become a victim of childhood sexual abuse and incest.

Viga, throughout her book, compares her dad to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was the smiling, loving father and friend to a lonely little girl who was taught that she was ugly and stupid by the angry, often violent, and unpredictable Mr. Hyde.  Mr. Hyde was physically and emotionally abusive to Viga and to her mother.

When Viga Boland was 11 years old, her family moved to Canada, where the physical and emotional abuse continued and at the age of 12, Viga's dad started to also sexually abuse her. The secrets, the lies, the shame and the blame of incest that make a survivors life a living hell began too.  Secrets such as "Let's not tell mama. It would hurt her." "If not for you, I would be having an affair with some other woman and your mother would be hurt." (These aren't exactly Viga's words. They were lies I was told too.) The coercion, the threats and the fear that are part of the daily life of an incest survivor, all of that worked to keep Viga a prisoner in her parents home until the age of 23. 

To find out more of Viga Boland's story of incest, you will have to read her book. I would recommend the book No Tears for my Father, written by Viga Boland to all who are interested in the truth of what it means to be  a victim of childhood abuse, domestic violence and incest. 

You can visit Viga Boland at these websites which are listed at the beginning of her book:

http://www.vigaboland.com

http://www.notearsformyfather.com

http://vigaland.blogspot.com 

http://www.youtube.com/vigaland 

http://vigaland.com 

Patricia

 

Are The Effects Of Incest A Life Sentence For A Survivor?

Sharing some more of my Tweets on Twitter from several weeks ago. Tell me what you think.

The sad fact of my life is that at age 60, my abusers are all dead but the effects of incest live on in me.

I have done many years of healing work and am in a good to great spot most of the time with my incest issues behind me.

Even with healing, sometimes an issue will pop up and catch me by surprise and I find more grieving to do.

More grieving, more healing, more anger and fear to feel and then let go of because of the incest in my childhood.

A Survivor's work is never done, at least in my experience. Joy and peace do exist and I enjoy them when they are here.

And I still have those moments of fear come up when something triggers a memory or a feeling from my inner child.

I live with hope and laughter in my life and I still am a work in progress.


Tomorrow is my dad's birthday. He died January 6, 2000. Because of the length of time that he sexually abused me, I count him as my main abuser and most of the issues that I have worked on came from the abuse done by him.

My dad was born in 1931 as the 3rd oldest of what would become a family with 12 kids. He quit school in 5th grade when he went to work in the fields with his dad to help feed their family. I don't know if he had been a good student or not. When I was older, I realized that he could barely read or write. He could write his name. As for his intelligence, I don't think he was very smart. He came from a family with alcoholism and codependency in it just as I did. My grandfather when I was older would start drinking on Friday evening as fast as he could cash his pay check and get to the store to buy beer. When I was growing up, we spent lots of weekends at their house. I was always afraid of my grandfather because he was loud, a big man and a mean drunk. He would drink all weekend. On Sundays, he would drive back to town to buy more beer even though it was against the law back then to sell alcohol on Sundays. You did not want to ride with my grandfather when he was drinking. I rode with him one time with my siblings.  I cannot understand how he was never in an accident or stopped by a policeman for drunk driving. He was all over the road. Whatever direction he looked, the car went. That was before you had seat beats in cars. He never drove over 40 miles per hour. Neither did my dad. This was also before you had interstate highways.

None of this is told to you as an excuse for my dad's behavior but to give you a little bit of background to his life and mine. I can feel sad for the child that he was and I can see where some of his patterns of behavior came from. I can see why he grew up into a frightened man who felt that he had to control everyone around him to feel safe. I did the same thing until I realized that control didn't make me safe or make me happy. For awhile, I copied what I saw as a child. You have to have awareness of behaviors before you can change them. My dad never saw that he needed to change anything. I have learned that control hides fear - lots of fear.

When you face your fear, you can give up the need to control. Letting go of fear makes room for you to start to heal.
Patricia

Healing From Abuse Means Doing The Work of Healing

Healing from abuse means doing the work of healing, not just talking about the abuse.  Yes, in the beginning of healing, talking about what happened to you is important.  In fact, talking, in itself, is very healing and breaks the bonds of silence that your abusers taught you.  At what point in the journey, do some survivors get stuck in the drama of telling their stories and never move beyond that point?  How do you tell when you are healing from telling your story and when you are just plain stuck?

For me, I told my story over and over for about 10 years but that wasn't all that I was doing.  I was reading books on healing from incest.  I was writing about my own experiences.  I talked to other survivors who were doing their own work.  I went to two different groups for counseling as well as doing individual work with two counselors over that ten year period.  I also had two 12-Step sponsors that gave me personal work to do on healing from incest. 

I did the work of recognizing the lies that my abusers told me. Darlene Ouimet, the owner of Emerging From Broken blog, does the best job of anyone that I know of exposing the lies that many survivors grew up hearing from their abusers.  I will give you a link to Emerging From Broken at the end of this article. 

For many survivors, those abusers were one or both of their parents.  Exposing the lies of your abusers is a very important part of your early recovery.  So is telling your story. Both are healing steps that need to be taken. 

Telling your story does not mean creating drama for yourselves or others.  Some suvivors create drama as a way of recreating what they are used to as children.  This is where exposing the lies of your abusers is so important.  When you see those beliefs as lies, you can begin to choose how you will react to your triggers, how you will react to the people that, on purpose or accidentally, set off those triggers in you. 

I believe that triggers happen to show you where you still need to work on yourselves and the issues behind the triggers.  Triggers don't happen to make you blow up all over someone else.  When you do that, then you become like your abusers and abuse someone else. That is what was done to you as children and it is what you continue to do to others until you learn that you don't have to continue those unhealthy patterns of behavior. 

A pattern happens when you repeat the same behavior over and over.  I have learned to look for patterns in my own behavior.  With awareness of patterns, I can then decide to make changes or stay the same.  If my behavior is hurting me or others, I decide to change.  That in itself is a process that takes time with lots of trial and error and apologies along the way until I change that pattern with a new, healthier pattern.

One example that comes from my own life has to do with anger and rage.  Rage is unheathy anger that grows and grows and gets blow all out of proportion usually because the first signs of anger were ignored, denied or stuffed deep inside.  Rage eventually comes out when the pressure is too great to hold it in any longer.  It comes out, usually on someone that totally doesn't deserve it.  I used to do this all the time.  Anger wasn't allowed in my house except for the rage that my dad carried around so my anger was denied and stuffed with food until the rage came rolling out like hot magma from an out of control volcano damaging everything in its path.

Rage was the first feeling that I learned to deal with because it was so volatile that I could easily see the damage that I was doing with it.  Doing this work isn't a matter of feeling shame for the fact that I couldn't control my rage.  Doing this work is a matter of feeling the feelings without allowing them to hurt myself or someone else. 

Rather than feeling shame when I get a new awareness, I forgive myself for not seeing the pattern sooner, then I set out to change the situation so that I don't continue to hurt myself or someone else.  It isn't enough to feel bad about my behavior.  If I am being hurt or someone else is, then I need to change that behavior.  If I say I am sorry but continue to do the same destructive pattern, then I am not really sorry.  Any behavior that I continue to do, I am getting something out of it or I would quit.  Feeling shame or guilt about a behavior is a sign that change needs to happen.  If I know that my reactions are out of proportion to the situation, it is my responsibility to do something to change my reaction.  If I am looking to create drama, I will find an excuse to do it. 

With healing comes responsibility for my own actions and reactions.  Another person does not trigger me.  My own issues are what trigger me, not what someone else said or did.  Those issues trigger me because I haven't healed that particular issue. It is not anyone else's responsibility to fix me, just as it is not my responsibility to fix anyone else.  The triggers will keep coming until I am healed in that area.  I am not saying that I am at fault or wrong or bad because I am still being triggered.  I am saying that it is my responsibility to heal me so that I am not triggered.  It is my responsibility to do my own work to heal.  If I am refusing to see the awareness that has come into my life because of my triggers then I am still playing victim.  I am still believing my abusers' lies that say that I am not capable of taking care of myself. Or I am still believing the lie that says I am too stupid and that I am worthless and have no value and can't make decisions for my own self. No matter what you said about me or to me, I alone am responsible for what I do with that information.  You do not make me angry.  I choose whether to get angry or not.  My actions are my responsibility.  How I respond to a person or a situation is my responsibility, not yours.  I can't blame you for what I am feeling.  I choose whether I stay stuck in the victim role or I move forward in the survivor role. 

Saying that I never meant to hurt someone doesn't mean a thing if I continue to hurt them.  Feelings are not inappropriate. It is what we do with them that can be inappropriate.  I have no way of knowing what another person is feeling unless they tell me.  What I may see as insensitivity or lack of empathy in another person may not be that at all.  I cannot know or guess what another person is feeling.  What that person may say has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them.  I cannot second guess other people unless I am intent on creating drama for myself.  If I want to create drama, drama will find me. When I say someone else is insensitive, I am projecting my own insensitivity onto that person.

I want to heal from incest.  I do not want to be defined by incest.  Incest happened to me but is not who I am.  I am a human being living and growing through my experiences.  Sharing my experiences does not make me better than you or perfect.  I am far from being perfect. I make mistakes. I still sometimes see someone else hurting and out of my feelings of compassion I want to make their way easier.  Sometimes I can help. Sometimes I cannot.  Sometimes I even manage to make situations worse.  Sometimes I play devil's advocate and try to look at the bigger picture.  I don't know where the term "devil's advocate" came from. I don't see it as bad.  I see it as the simple process of stepping back and looking at more than the immediate view or seeing a different view than everyone else is taking.  Being different is not a bad thing.

To use something that I heard earlier today on an interview between Michelle Rosenthal and Susan Kingsley-Smith on the Blog Talk Radio station called Heal My PTSD, you hold the power of your own healing.  You have to do the work if you want to heal.  My question for you is, "Do you want to heal?" or  "Do you want to stay stuck in victim mode and blame everybody else for your life?"  If you want to heal, at some point, you have to move beyond the blaming stage of healing.  In order to heal, at some point in your life, you have to take responsibility for your present and future.  Responsibility for the abuse of your childhood belongs with your abuser. Responsibility for what you do with your adult life belongs with you.
Patricia

Related Links:

Emerging From Broken blog
@ http://emergingfrombroken.com/

Heal My PTSD interview on "Why Don't Survivors Want To Do the Work to Heal PTSD?"
@ http://www.blogtalkradio.com/heal-my-ptsd/2010/02/26/why-dont-survivors-want-to-heal-ptsd