Thank you, SWOT. As it is with discussing the most hurtful aspects of our abusive childhoods here, learning that I am not the only one this happened to helps me see that first therapist too, through my own eyes. Always before, through all these years, I could only see what happened through the eyes of the abuser. There was too much pain and guilt and confusion whirling around inside me already for me to do anything but accept that his condemnation was valid. Take that one step further, add in that my mother was predicting doom for my at risk child and accusing me of "Well, I guess you weren't such a good mother after all, were you?", the condemnation went global, and it went radioactive. It was a very hard time. I was so desperate to know what I had done to my child. That drove me. It wasn't until I found the site (and that was for my son, well into an addiction I denied until I had been here for some months) that I began to be able to stand up even a little, even in my own thinking.
Man, I felt so guilty and wrong and wondered whether I were stupid or evil or just plain weird.
I feel sad for myself in that time. I was so confused, and in such pain and so desperate over what was happening to my kids.
And there was my mother, and there was my sister.
But I had D H.
:O)
So, somehow, I did get through to functional. Ballet was part of that ~ a big part. Going back to school was one of the scariest things I could have done. In case I did turn out to be stupid, or worse. But I did it. That is the thing we all need to remember about ourselves. We were so hurt, and so freaking vulnerable. Predators swarm us, I swear they can spot us a mile away.
We faced those things and we did those things and we did the best we knew every time and we felt badly when we messed up and we tried to do better.
We are good, good people.
We have every reason to blame and whine and demand reparation but we don't. We try harder. We could not know those things about ourselves until we had lived life to look back on to see the truth of who we really are, and of who we had to have been, all along.
That we know now these good things ~ or at least, these good intentions that we held and hold ~ that is an unshakeable source of strength for us now because of the truth in it.
Something real, to counter the abuser's condemnation and punishment and naming.
Thank you again, SWOT. Seeing that first therapist in these terms I am using to describe how I feel about him now, when I am healthier and see him and his abuse through my own eyes is new to me. I really never thought I would heal from that. It is shaming to acknowledge that your own therapist could not even stand to treat you without hurting you, too.
Not even for money.
I was very afraid of that therapist, of the medical record that existed, of the names I may have been named, officially and in his mind.
And I had no defense, in that time. He was the therapist. I was not.
Just as it was with my mother...who would know better what was true about me than my own mother, than my own therapist.
I agree with the scum part in the sense that he had to know what he was doing. He had to know, and he had to have done it on purpose. If that is true, if he did what he did on purpose ~ it's one of those things I am always saying about my family of origin, too. I don't get the win. So, I am angry, now. Finally able to be angry, and finally, to see what he did to me through my eyes and not his. I don't want what he did to turn me bitter, just as I don't want the ongoing abuses happening in my family of origin to make me bitter.
We walk a fine line, in our healing.
Book TV is doing a program about Selma, AL during the civil rights era. SWOT, you posted about the legitimization of gay marriage. In a way, we are doing the same things, on an individual basis, that each of these groups of people had to do for themselves too, to establish legitimacy.
Hated and abused and taught that was who they are, each individual in every victimized group fighting now for legitimacy has walked where we walk, today. Their fight for legitimacy was and is painful, too. Predators, people who hate for other reasons and focus on the vulnerable and easily victimized to act that out, attacked them, too.
Taunted and teased and broke and broke them, too.
But they didn't give up, and we will not stop our healing processes, either. We must claim it, but we too are beautiful human beings with every right to reclaim every wonderful thing that was taken from us or that made us feel and believe we were ugly or stupid or worth less on principle, for no reason other than that we were who we are.
So, I thought that was an interesting way to look at this.
Did everyone hear the President sing Amazing Grace yesterday?
I found what he did courageous and heartstoppingly beautiful.
Perhaps, he was singing for us too, SWOT and Copa.
Cedar
