Tag: teens

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.

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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Finding Your Voice, Knowing Your Worth

I’m currently reading a book titled There’s A Hole In My Love Cup by Sven Erlandson. Yesterday I read a section that talked about confronting those who created your negative core beliefs, most likely a parent or parents. Most of us have never confronted them out of fear, not that they will lash out and yell at us for confronting them, but out of fear that they will minimize our feelings, won’t change how they treat us, and therefore confirm our core belief that we are worthless and don’t matter.

He goes on to say that not only do we have the right to get rid of all the crap that they filled our love cup with, but we need to get rid of it and give it back to it’s rightful owner, whether they are going to change or not. Once we do that, get rid of all the crap in our love cup, we have room for love to fill it. The people may not change, but our relationship with them will as we realize our worth and refuse to be treated as less than any longer.

Taking our power back, finding and using our voice, and knowing our worth will also change other relationships in our lives. There are people in our lives who see who we really are somewhere deep beneath the polished surface we work so hard to protect, down to the the hurt, frightened, little kid is hiding, hoping to not be found or hurt again. As we find your voice, realize our worth, and exercise our power, these people will be there, cheering us on and supporting us through the tough times, and there will be tough times because there’s another type of person in our lives.

The other type of people are the ones who hurt us, whether on purpose or because they were hurt and didn’t know how to love us doesn’t matter, they hurt us. When we decide it’s time to let them know how they hurt us, they will most likely respond with something similar to one of these:

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“You’re just overreacting.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“If you had just___________, then I wouldn’t have had to ________”

They will find a way to minimize us and our feelings in order to make themselves feel better. In that moment, we will know that we no longer have to listen to their voice in our heads because they never truly wanted what was best for us. If they did they would have built us up instead of tearing us down. They would have listened to us as we explained how we felt instead of minimizing us to make themselves feel better.

Writing my book was the ultimate way for me to tell my parents how they made me feel worthless as a child and how that affected my life. My mom had died twelve years before I wrote it and my dad had stopped speaking to me four years prior, but whenever I had brought things up to either of them previously, they dismissed me, proving to me that I was worthless to them. Writing my book, gave me my power back and my voice. It changed me and my beliefs about myself.

I know not everybody is going to write a book, but confronting the people who have hurt you changes you. It changes other relationships as well because you realize that you are worth so much more than how some people treat you. I have lost a few relationships since I wrote my book and realized that I have value as a human being and am worthy of love and that I no longer have to chase people to love me; either people will want me, as I am, in their lives or they won’t.

Find your voice, find your power, find your worth.

You deserve it and you are lovable just the way you are!

Domestic Violence Awareness Month

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Domestic violence is also known as Intimate Partner Violence or IPV. It is defined as the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control by one intimate partner against another. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, threats, and emotional abuse. I believe everyone should be aware of it, know what to look for in both the victim and the abuser. Be able to listen for what is NOT being said, see what’s happening behind the scenes. We can’t do that if we aren’t aware of it.

*Just a note to start with, all of the statistics and information used in this blog will be from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV.)*

1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been the victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner.

Abusers don’t begin by hitting their partner, they are usually charming and win over their partner with acts of kindness and love. Once the partner is attached the abuser will begin the abuse cycle by exerting various form of coercive control. These tactics can include isolation, degrading, micromanaging manipulating, sexual coercion, threats, stalking, and punishment as well as physical abuse.

The partner has now become the victim of domestic violence and may not even be aware of it because it was so insidious and subversive. The abuser will have broken down the victim to a point that they may feel helpless to leave. Sometimes the victim may fight back in what is known as reactive violence. The victim tends to see reactive violence as a way to get the violence against them to stop, a form of self-protection, or a way to restore the dignity that has been destroyed by the abuser.

Abuse victims will often attempt other means to end the violence against them before resorting to reactive violence. These tactics include negotiation, appeasement, threats to leave, or actually leaving the perpetrator, getting help from others, threats to expose the abuser, and threats to hurt the abuser emotionally, economically, or damage their property.

It is often difficult for the victim to leave their abuser for a variety of reasons which can include that they feel isolated, depressed, or helpless. They might be embarrassed of the situation, they might withdraw emotionally, they may be financially unstable, have religious or cultural beliefs that reinforce staying in the relationship, or feel like they have nowhere to go.

Also, many times, when the victim does finally leave their abuser, the abuse doesn’t end. The abuser continues with their attempts to control their victim. Sometimes, it is after the victim has left that the abuser murders them. Sometimes, the leaving is the most dangerous time in a domestic violence situation.

All of this is a lot to take in and might be difficult to understand for somebody who is lucky enough to have never experienced domestic violence, but there are almost 35% of women and about 31% of men in California alone that have experienced domestic violence. Become aware so that you can be a friend to someone who is hurting and an advocate to someone who might need it.

If you’d like more information or you need help in a domestic violence situation here are some resources for you to check out:

https://ncadv.org/2021DVAM— National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Home
National Domestic Violence Hotline

https://www.rainn.org/— National Sexual Assault Hotline, Chat, and Website

Do You Ever Hurt So Bad, You Stop Hurting?

A few days ago, my psychology class was learning about child abuse, the reasons for it, but more importantly, how it can be prevented and the impact it can have on the victims.

We watched two YouTube movies in class, that demonstrate, in a very emotional way, the damage that child abuse can have, but also the hope that is possible for a victims of child abuse to become survivors of child abuse. There are posted at the end of the blog.

The movies follow the story of a young girl named Zoe. She narrates the story with an internal monologue as we see what’s unfolding in her young life. She starts with this:

“Sometimes someone hurts you so bad, it stops hurting at all. Until something makes you feel again, and then it all comes back. Every word, every hurt, every moment.”

I am a survivor of abuse.

So many times throughout my life, I have felt numb, unable to feel anything at all; not pain, not love, not joy, not peace.

NOTHING. AT. ALL.

I was merely existing. Making it through one day to the next day, doing what had to be done, but I didn’t hurt.

I’m wrong, actually. I did feel something. I felt exhausted. All the time, everything I did required more energy than I had, but things had to get done so I did them.

No matter how tired I was, no matter how numb I was, I knew that I wouldn’t feel that way forever. I knew that things would get better. I knew that one day, I would feel something other than exhausted.

I hung on to the hope that moments pass. That I would feel again. And I have, every single time.

If you are in a situation that has hurt you so bad that it stops hurting at all, please remember that it ends. The feelings do come back.

And yes, when the feelings come back the first thing we have to do is process and heal from the hurt that brought us to that place this time, but it’s possible to heal. It’s possible to have an amazing future even with a scarred past. Our pasts DO NOT define who we are. We write our own stories.

If you are hurting, numb or feel helpless, or hopeless or want to give up on life, please call 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741.

If you are being abused please call: Child abuse- call or text 1-800-422-4453 Domestic Violence-call 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788 for Sexual Assault call 1-800-656-4673 or go to https://www.rainn.org/ to chat online.

We can heal from abuse and go on to lead, happy, healthy lives.

Here are those two videos I promised you. Get the tissues ready, but they are so worth the watch. Together they are about 30 minutes. The first one is 12 minutes and the second one is about 20 minutes long.

Anyone Else Exhausted?

2020 has been the longest year of my life. Wait a minute. It’s not 2020, it’s 2021! Okay, 2021 has been the longest year of my life, and it’s only August… This does not bode well.

Maybe the two years have just run together since COVID-19 and conspiracies seemed to have taken over the world. Whatever the reason, this has been the longest year and I am EXHAUSTED!

Not that this year has been entirely bad, I mean sure enough bad stuff has happened since March of 2020 to fill a few lifetimes.

In America alone we currently have 628,000 people who have died from COVID-19.

We’ve had the most contentious election in American history, where the losing candidate and his supporters, just can’t let it go.

We had an insurrection where thousands of people broke into the U.S. Capitol while Congress was certifying the election results in order to “stop the steal” and some of those people also had lists of congress people they wanted to harm. As of four days ago, 615 people have been charged in connection to the Capitol Insurrection.

We’ve had numerous black people killed by police officers and protests in response.

Crimes against Asians are on the rise because a certain group of people continue to refer to COVID-19 in a derogatory way towards one ethnic group.

I could go on, but I’m too tired.

My life has also been challenging during this time, growth usually is difficult, but things are good and moving in a positive direction.

I’m just so utterly and completely exhausted.

I sat down the other day after work to take a 23 minute break and watch one old episode of The Nanny before going to pick up my kid from football. I didn’t even make it past the theme song before I was taking a trip to dreamland.

Some days I’m so tired that a simple change in plans reduces me to tears because I can’t handle anymore.

I’ve taken time away, time off, time to veg in front of the TV, but there’s always more to do, another kid to pick up, another lesson to plan, another meal to cook, another dish to wash and while I’m off relaxing, that stuff is piling up, making more work for me later.

I just want to sleep while everything else still magically gets done. Where’s my Harry Potter wand?

Any one else exhausted?

Invisible Me

Growing up I learned that it was good to be invisible. If I was invisible, then I couldn’t get in trouble. I couldn’t get yelled at. I couldn’t get beat with the stick. I couldn’t get dismissed. I couldn’t get sent outside. I couldn’t get told that I’d be given something to cry about. I couldn’t get ignored.

Being invisible was lonely, but it to me it was better to be invisible than any of the alternatives.

Of course when I was 5 or 6 years old, I didn’t realize what I was doing, making myself invisible, I was just trying not to be yelled at every time I didn’t argue or did exactly what I was told without talking back. By the time I was 7 years old, I was so good at it that when I cut my finger so badly that I needed stitches, I hid it from my mom for as long as I could, but it kept bleeding and eventually she noticed.

I learned that in order to get along and be loved, I needed to go along. I needed to agree with what people said whether I actually did or not. If I disagreed with them, they wouldn’t love me anymore and as a child, I NEEDED my parents to love me. I WANTED my parents to love me.

When I became a teenager, I became myself for a little bit, but not for long. I desperately wanted their love and acceptance. When I spoke my mind and said what I thought and how I felt that differed from their point of view I was rebellious, disrespectful, hateful, good for nothing…worthless. I couldn’t handle that feeling so I went back to being invisible. I went along to get along.

Once I starting agreeing with my parents again, I was the golden child, but who I was, how I felt, was once again, invisible. I didn’t really matter. The only thing that mattered was their perception of who they thought I should be.

This has really messed me up in many relationships. In my mind, I believe that for people to like/love/accept me, I need to hide most of who I am and only let them know the parts about me that agree with them. I know understand that this is a completely messed up way to live. If someone doesn’t love and accept me for who I am then they don’t deserve me.

I’d like to say that I’m completely over this, that I can tell people how I feel anytime, but I’m still scared. I still worry about if they’ll like me or not. It’s difficult to break lifelong habits, even ones that hurt you. But I am a work in progress. I may always be a work in progress and that’s okay with me.

Intimate Partner Violence

When most people hear about somebody being abused by an intimate partner, like a boy/girlfriend or spouse, they will often ask, “Why didn’t they just leave?” Or will say, “If that had been me, I would have just left.” People who are lucky enough to have never been in that situation have no idea how hard it is to just leave.

That’s a picture of me the summer before I started high school. The very next summer I would meet a boy that treated me like nobody had ever treated me before. He liked me, he told me he loved me. He asked me to be his girlfriend. He risked the wrath of my dad to see me. I was in LOVE.

It wasn’t long before he started criticizing me. Little things, like how pretty I’d be if I just wore make up, or dresses. He started letting me know how lucky I was to have him as a boyfriend because most guys wouldn’t want to date a girl as tomboy-ish as me.

It also wasn’t long before he started pressuring me to have sex with him. (I’m talking weeks here.)

At first it was on phone calls. I’d tell him no, I wasn’t ready, that I wanted to wait until I was married. (I had been taught that a girl’s greatest gift to her husband on their wedding night was her virginity.)

Then I was fighting his hands off when we were kissing. I was constantly moving them to where I was more comfortable. It was a losing battle, I eventually stopped fighting it and let his hands go where he wanted them to and do what he wanted them to no matter how uncomfortable I was, because, as he said, “if I loved him I would.”

For TEN months I put off the inevitable. I put off sex with him. Then one day he told me we were going to hang out with a friend of his. When we arrived, he had the key to his friend’s apartment and let us in. We were alone. He started kissing me as soon as we sat on the couch, then whispered in my ear, “I’ve waited long enough.”

I tried to get out from under him, but he was too big and too strong for me. He forced himself into me and did what he wanted. Because he loved me and he wanted to show me how much.

I cried.

I had been told for so long that my entire worth and value was wrapped up in my virginity and he had just taken that from me, so what was the point in anything anymore. I gave up fighting. I didn’t tell a single soul. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to know what I had done. I gave in, I gave up. I was worthless. I was lucky that this guy still wanted to be with me because nobody else would want me since I wasn’t a virgin anymore.

For a year, I kept that secret. For a year, he continued to use and abuse me. For a year I continued to die a little more inside.

Then I went on a double date with a friend, I was still dating my abuser, but he was in boot camp and she really wanted to go on this date, but not alone so I agreed to go with his friend. We saw the movie Sleeping With the Enemy. There’s a scene where Julia Robert’s character’s husband forces her to have sex with him. Tears streamed down my cheeks.

My date noticed. We went to the lobby and he asked if I was ok. I told him, “That’s what he does.” His response was, “Your boyfriend rapes you?” I just nodded. It was the first time I used that word to describe what he did to me. He raped me for over a year while I stayed with him because I felt too worthless to leave him; too ashamed to ask for help.

That is why people stay with their abusers, among other reasons.

I gave up. I got tired of telling him no. That is not consent. That is rape.

Giving in because you are afraid of what will happen if you say no is not consent. That is rape.

Saying no and your intimate partner doing it anyway, is rape.

Being told when or how often you are going to have sex in your relationship is not consent. That is rape.

Being told that if you say no, you don’t love them, is coercion, not consent. That is rape.

Just because you are in a committed, intimate relationship does not mean that you owe your partner your body at anytime unless you are a willing participant in the activity. If you are not a 100 percent willing participant, that is rape. You have the right to say no, even to your intimate partner. Your body is your body.

https://www.healthline.com/health/domestic-violence-costs#Intimate-Partner-Violence:-Defining-It-

Sticks and Stones

https://medium.com/@havenstrange.1/words-hurt-an-experiment-3b9bab69566f

Growing up, children should feel safe, secure, loved, and cherished. Unfortunately that isn’t always the case. Many children grow up feeling like the love of their parents is conditional. That their safety is reliant on their parents mood that day. That security is the guy at the door of the Target store. They’ve never heard of nor felt being cherished and wouldn’t even know that it was something they deserved.

Children growing up in these environments tend to become peacemakers, putting the needs of others before their own. Working their hardest to keep everyone else, especially their parents, “happy” so that they can feel safe and loved. It sounds like it might be a good thing, but it’s not for many reasons. Children who do this begin to believe that they don’t matter, their feelings don’t matter, their needs don’t matter. They internalize the idea that the only thing that matters is keeping the people who are supposed to love them unconditionally happy, so that they will continue to love them.

When they grow up, these children have a higher tendency to wind up in a physically or emotionally abusive relationship and may not even realize it, because that’s what they’re used to. They have learned that the people who love them also hurt them. That love and pain go together. They have been conditioned by the situation they grew up in to believe that those who love them will also make them feel worthless.

Or maybe, the abused child has learned they were abused as a child and healed from it. Maybe they thought they learned from that. Maybe they find a romantic partner who values them and shows genuine love. Somebody who totally understands the abuse they suffered and helps them continue to heal throughout the rest of their life. That would be amazing. There are people out there who will be that person for the abuse survivor.

Then there are people who will know that the person is an abuse survivor and try to understand, but because they don’t have empathy, they may be unable to truly help. After awhile, they may end up saying things to the abuse survivor that are hurtful, that cause the survivor to revert back to the hurt, insecure, scared child, but because of therapy, the survivor is able to say something to the partner. The partner apologizes or explains away the behavior and the abuse survivor, wanting to be loved, accepts and forgives and moves forward.

The hard part in all of this is that the words leave scars. If the motivations for the negative words are never dealt with, the scars may get infected. If the words continue to happen, if a pattern of negative words emerge, the childhood abuse survivor may end up becoming the victim of adult domestic partner violence.

The survivor of childhood abuse needs to heal from that, face it and always confront it in all relationships moving forward. Nobody ever deserves to be abused, sometimes abuse is so covert that we don’t even realize it’s happening, even more so if you are the survivor of childhood abuse.

Always, always, always be careful with your words. According to several relationship researchers, including John Gottman and April Stevenson, it takes a ratio of 7:1-4:1 of positive to negative interactions for people to maintain a positive relationship. That means that you need to have somewhere between four and seven positive interactions to every negative interaction to maintain a good relationship and build a person up. So when you criticize a person, you better have at least 4 good things to say about them too, I would tend to go overboard for a child. But be specific. Say things like, “You did a great job cleaning up the clothes off your bedroom floor.” “You worked really hard on that math homework.”

If you are an abuse survivor though, I think you can set boundaries without doing this. Telling somebody they hurt you, is not being critical as long as you do it in a way that emphasizes your feelings. Such as “I felt hurt, when I was told________________, because_________________.”

www.pinterest.com/pin/323837029429358137

It would be amazing if we could end childhood abuse and domestic abuse, but as long as there are humans involved in relationships, we won’t be able to. Until then, my hope is that all who have been abused will find the help they need. Here are a few resources if you have been abused or know someone who has been abused:

The M3ND Project Home
Home
National Domestic Violence Hotline

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National Suicide Prevention Lifeline