Category: sexual assault

Heal to Handle Joy

A friend of mine sent this image to me recently. I have no idea who to credit for it, but it is so true.

I spent most of my life hyper-vigilant, not knowing who I could trust, even myself. I often felt like there was an overwound spring, ready to break free inside of me. The anxiety often threatened to pull me under and drown me. It took a toll on my body as I am still learning to relax my overly tense muscles.

Therapy has helped me tremendously. The first few times I went, I did the work to get through the trauma of the moment. Then because of insurance, or time committment, I would end treatment with new skills and strategies for dealing with the stresses of life.

This time though, I have continued beyond the trauma of the moment and gotten to the base of my mental health issues; feeling worthless, not good enough, abandoned, alone, and dealt with them. Now, instead of always waiting for the next bad thing to happen, I believe that I will find joy.

That is a terrifying, new experience for me. I’m not saying that I haven’t been happy before, but I never trusted it, history had shown me that good times don’t last. You get your heart ripped out of your chest, cut to pieces, and left alone to put it back together again.

As I have been learning to live my authentic self, not making myself fit into a certain mold or expectation of me, I have found people who like me, and all the oddities and nerdiness that go along with me. It’s scary to be vulnerable and honest with yourself and others, but in the process, I am learning how to handle joy in my life. I’m not scared that I have to behave a certain way to keep people likeing me, they just like me.

Therapy taught me that I can be me. As a friend learned in one of her therapy appointments, I’m not for everybody and everybody isn’t for me and that’s okay. As I have embraced who I am, I have learned to find joy in acceptance, peace in solitude, and contentment with others. I no longer feel as though I am a spring ready to break free, now if I could just get my shoulders to realize that they are not responsible for keeping everything inside so they can relax…

If you need someone to talk to, I am now an Associate Marriage Family Therapist working at Share Homes Foster and Adoption Agency in Lodi, Ca. If you are in California, I can work with you. Send a message for more information.

Anxiety Lies

healthyplace.com

I have anxiety and it lies to me. It knows every one of my insecurities and fears. It whispers them to me in a steady drone in the back of my head, like constant white noise. Sometimes anxiety chooses one or two of them to pick out and amplify; to scream into my mind until I can’t breath, until I can’t think of anything else, until my heart is racing as if I’m facing a life threatening moment, until I want to run away.

(I take medication that helps. Finally, my doctor and I have found a medication that helps AND now, almost a year later, hasn’t left me wanting to do nothing but sleep which is what every other medication I have tried has left me feeling. I also see a therapist, having a person to talk to has helped tremendously.)

The lies anxiety chooses to amplify focus on two topics that have a huge impact on my life: “You can’t do this.” and “They won’t like you.”

Those two lies have kept me from doing so much in my life. They have kept me hidden. They have kept me invisible, locked inside a prison of my own making. There have been people in my life that fed into the lies along with anxiety, who emotionally, physically, and sexually abused me, but it was the lies anxiety told me, and I believed, that kept me in those relationships far longer than I should have been. I couldn’t leave my parents until I was 18, but I kept them in my life much longer. The boyfriend who raped me and my first husband, I waited until they were physically away from me before I broke up with them.

I believed I couldn’t do it.

This past week, I went on a vacation specifically designed to challenge myself. I was willing to go alone, but a coworker ended up joining me, because it was one of her bucket-list travel destinations. It was amazing getting to know her better, I’m so glad she joined me on all the challenges I chose to do. She even had to do one of them herself, because of health reasons, I wasn’t allowed to participate in it.

I hiked up waterfalls, one of them was 1200 steps! There were many stops… for photos… along the way. It was never because I needed to catch my breath. Where are the photos you ask, ummmmm. I’m pretty sure the film didn’t develop on those… (HAHAHAHA.)

Skogafoss Waterfall, Iceland (the black line to the right are the steps I climbed to the top)

I walked through an ice cave, in a glacier that’s melting, on a volcano, that has never gone more than 100 years between eruptions, until now. It’s been 104 years since the last eruption. I walked over bridges made of 2X6 planks of wood, that have been chewed up by the cramp-ons that people wear on their boots to not slip on the ice with melting glacier water rushing beneath them and nothing to hold on to except the occasional rope hooked into the melting glacier wall.

Katla Ice Cave, Iceland

I met tons of new people, that I actually talked to. I didn’t listen to anxiety telling me that they wouldn’t like me. I just went for it. There I may not have learned everyone’s name, but we all did amazing things together and I will never forget them being there with me. I ate food that I NEVER thought I’d eat and it was DELICIOUS. I hope to find some of it here in California, but some of it I know I won’t. I ate fermented shark and I will never eat it again! EVER! But I did it, I got out of my comfort zone and did it! I can do hard things.

My travel buddy, our driver/guide for two days, and me at Silfra, Iceland (where two continents meet)

The next time anxiety tries to lie to me, I need to remember all the hard things I did on this trip and all the people I met. I can do this and people will like me.

Forgiveness

I grew up being told that if in order to be a “good Christian” I needed to forgive those who did wrong to me. If I wanted God to forgive me of my sins against Him, I needed to forgive others of their sins against me. I mean, the Lord’s Prayer, what we are taught is the “perfect prayer” says, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

If we forgive others, then God can forgive us and we can have a chance of an amazing future in Heaven.

What I was never taught, what I never learned growing up, was how to forgive myself, so while I was busy forgiving others, so that I could have a future chance in Heaven, I was living in a version of Hell on earth.

I wasn’t taught how to forgive myself for being “stupid” enough to trust my boyfriend to go with him to his friends house.

I didn’t learn how to forgive myself for being so “slutty” that I wore a knee-length denim skirt and a long sleeve button up shirt that day, that I had buttoned all the way up, but somehow, I must have been “asking for it.”

I never knew how to forgive myself for being so embarrassed about what “I” did that day, the day my boyfriend decided that I had been teasing him long enough, that he forced himself inside of me, without even taking my clothes off, that I didn’t tell anybody for months, and I “allowed” it to keep happening for another eight months.

I had forgiven him for what he did, so I could go to Heaven, but I had never forgiven myself. I get upset when people blame victims, but I had been doing that my whole life to myself.

Then a few months ago, my therapist asked me when I was going to forgive myself, as I was leaving. I was so angry with him, for the entire week between sessions. That question was all I could think about.

Forgiving myself? I struggled with it for almost two weeks. I cried, I screamed. I yelled at my therapist. I finally forgave myself.

I had to realize I was a fifteen year old child. I was not in control of that situation in any way. He drove me there, I knew something felt off, but I had no way of leaving and nobody to call, no way to call anyone since there were no cell phones back then. Once he started, he had me pinned down and was about 200 pounds to my 90 pounds, there was no way for me to sop him.

I didn’t have anyone to turn to when it was over. There were no safe adults in my life. The adults at school would have to call the police, my mom would think I was a slut and a sinner. If I told the adults at school my mom would eventually find out, which is exactly what happened months later. She ended up telling me that I had to marry him.

Since I forgave myself, I no longer feel like I’m living in my own personal version of Hell on earth. My thoughts have slowed down (most of the time) and I can sleep at night. I don’t constantly feel like I’m in fight or flight mode.

Forgiving others, is something I recommend if you need to in order to move on from them.

Forgiving yourself, I highly recommend, I don’t think you can live your life to it’s fullest potential if you don’t.

April Is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

I was sexually assaulted for the first time in Junior High when a boy touched my crotch as he walked past me getting off the bus. I was raped by by boyfriend a few years later when I was fifteen. I didn’t break up with him immediately because he threatened to tell people, especially my mom, that I’d had sex with him if I broke up with him.

In the ultra-conservative, Christian church I belonged to at the time, having sex before marriage was equivalent to murder; it was just about the ultimate sin. If my mom found out that I’d had sex, she’d call me slut, whore, easy, and I’d endure lecture upon lecture about how I was used goods, that no man would ever want me know, how I had given up that ONE GIFT that I had to offer my future husband. How do I know she’d do that? I’d heard her talk about other people plenty of times, she did not keep her judgement to herself.

Later, when I’d end up alone with that boyfriend, if he wanted to have sex and I didn’t, he’d remind me,

“We already did it, so what’s the big deal?”

Or, “If you really loved me you would.”

Or, “So, you don’t want to be with me anymore, fine. Leave me. See who’ll want used goods like you.”

Or, “If you don’t, I’ll go tell everybody you’re a slut and that we have sex all the time.”

Or, “I bought you dinner, you owe me this.”

When I was fifteen years old, I was just scared to tell him no. I didn’t want anyone to find out what he did to me. I felt dirty, used, embarrassed, worthless, and unlovable. When I finally did tell my mom what happened she told me I had to marry him because I had sex with him. I was shocked!

As an adult I know that is coercive rape, when I was a teenager, I just thought I was too weak to say no. When I finally reported to the police what happened a few months later, when I found the courage to break up with him, even the male police officer I reported to, told me nothing would happen because I kept having sex with him. I told him it was because I was scared to say no. I told him that he hit me. None of it mattered, because I stayed.

Coercive rape is rape. Period. End of story. It doesn’t matter why you stay. If coercive rape is happening to you, most likely the entire relationship is dangerous and you need an escape plan to get out safely. Do what it take to keep yourself safe, but plan an escape.

Here are some resources:

https://www.rainn.org/resources–National Sexual Assault Hotline information

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