Happy to be a Part of Your Problem

Survivors on a Mission

Many people seem to see social media as some kind of curse and granted there are a bunch of negative side-effects to being able to share your entire life online. like online bullying.

But, on the other had, the voice that social media and the internet as a whole, have given to abuse survivors is truly beneficial. A voice has been given to people, who didn’t really have one before. Whether it is a whistle-blower, a creative person who finally gets to promote their art, or an abuse survivor.

Finding your voice is important in any case, but for abuse survivors it is also an essential part of the healing journey. And if you’re not comfortable telling your story to others, it may be enough to tell it to yourself. Very often the trauma, we survived stays stuck inside of us, quietly wreaking havoc. Others might not understand what we’re going through and surviving abuse can be very lonely at times. So, while we need to be careful whom we share our stories with, there is a sense of relief in doing so and an opportunity to find others, who have been through something similar. Finding your own tribe, a family, whatever you wanna call it – it is essential.

Another big plus of sharing your insights – raising awareness! People have started to tell their stories, be it on social media, platforms like YouTube, they’ve written books, blogs, they have podcasts etc.

But the point is that survivors of abuse now DO share their stories, whether they have a professional background, as in the field of psychology or not. And that is great!

Abuse has been going on for eons and all over our beautiful planet. But never before, has there been a time when information about it was so widespread. We can now just google terms, like ‘gaslighting’ or ‘dog-whistling’ and educate ourselves. And that goes for everyone – people, who may have no idea how serious these things are, people who are being abused and survivors. Everyone gets a fair chance to find out the truth of what’s out there. But all of this has another huge advantage. It makes the life of abusive people harder.

Awareness is everything. And when victims of abuse start to actually understand what mechanisms lie behind the atrocities they had to endure, it’ll get harder and harder for abusers to have their way.

People who are aware, that they are being gaslighted are much harder to be gaslighted. When you eventually learn that other victims of domestic violence found a safe place and were able to escape, you might be empowered to ditch your own unhealthy relationship. When someone with a lack of self-love becomes aware, that this is a direct result of childhood abuse and realises that the person, who molested them as a child is the same individual who made them feel so unworthy in the first place – the cycle can be broken.

Abusers are manipulators. Often the manipulation of their victims, is enough abuse in itself. But their entire gig depends heavily on being able to influence their victims, especially if the abuse is ongoing. At the very least they need to make you believe that this is OK, meaning that it is not actually abuse and if you think that, you are the crazy one. Or they make you think that you are the problem and this is happening to you because you deserve it. Because you are inherently bad. But in some way, shape or form, they need to have some sway over you, to keep you in line.

So, when the victim starts to educate themselves about the mechanisms abusers employ, this narrative becomes much harder to maintain or may even be completely destroyed. Speaking out and dragging these abusive mechanisms into the open, makes it harder for abusers to follow through on their plans and, I truly believe, that it may even help prevent some things from happening.

And while I fully understand that me and my blog are just tiny little fish in the vast ocean of the internet, I have to admit that I actually feel honoured to be a tiny little part of this problem for abusive individuals. I am not a therapist, psychiatrist or in any way formally educated, when it comes to these matters. All I have are my personal experiences. But still, I do believe that every voice that may provide even a little bit of insight, can be helpful.

So, please find your voice if you can. Every story counts. Every story helps.

This is a valuable source with some tips when it comes to the safety of kids: https://www.siebenpolklaw.com/child-safety-tips/

Never give up

..is what someone told me a couple of years ago, without knowing what my story is or what my dreams are.

But this was a person, who had fought for decades to fulfil their childhood dream and succeeded in the end. Their journey was taken with many ups, but also with many downs.

So, if you need all of your energy today to just stay awake – that’s ok.

If you need all of your energy today, just to cope with your responsibilities – that’s ok.

If you need all of your energy today, just to drink some water – that’s ok.

If you need all of your energy today, just to eat a little bit – that’s ok.

If you need all of your energy today, just to keep breathing – that’s ok.

If you need all of your energy today, just to stay alive – that’s ok.

Because the ups are bound to show up again.

The Importance of Hope

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’
Audrey Hepburn

Years ago, I saw a therapist who told me that I shouldn’t have hope.

She told me, that hope was nothing more than a defence-mechanism and therefore, hope can be dangerous. It meant to her that i am not wiling to face reality and the cold, hard truths of my life. I was speechless, when she said that, and completely taken aback.

Hope had always been a substantial part of my healing process. Hope for better times and better things to come my way, hope for relationships to improve…Hope, simply, for a better tomorrow.

Luckily, I figured out quickly that this therapist might not be the best match for me and I moved on and found a GREAT one. However, I remember clearly losing hope (if only for a moment) back then. After this discouraging experience, I thought for a moment that there are simply no therapists out there, that might be able to get me through my piled up emotional baggage. This may seem unreasonable, but I’m sure some can relate. Losing hope can happen oh so quickly. Sometimes, you are not even aware that you lost it, only an outsider might be able to tell. I believe that, unfortunately, it is easy to lose hope, especially for abuse survivors.

So, I’m trying to remind myself of all the happy endings, I already experienced: I did find an amazing therapist, who helps me more than I’d even be able to describe with words. And that is by far not the only story, I know of, that proves that hope is worth having.

In all fairness, I believe what at least some of the ‘no hope enthusiasts’ might talk about, is the concept of ‘false hope’. And you might want to defend them, saying that they simply mean well and don’t wish to see you get disappointed. But, how could they possibly predict, how things will develop for work out or you? There are so many possibilities in this world, for better or worse – they are chances you’ll have to take.

One day, I got talking with my co-worker about all the places, we always dreamt moving to. But all of our dream destinations come with the visa issue attached, you cannot just pack your bags and move there. So, the question is, is something like this possible at all, given all of those obvious obstacles?

The answer has to be yes, because difficult simply does not mean impossible. You could also make an argument for something being ultimately more satisfying, if you had to fight for it, if you had to overcome obstacles to get to where you wanted to be. And maybe some things are actually meant to be.

This chat with my co-worker reminded me of another true story about hope, I heard years ago: There was a man living in the UK, going through a very hard time. He had just been through a difficult divorce and he had been out of work for a couple of months at the time. Another thing, you need to know about this English man is that he had always been dreaming about living in Canada, at last for the last 25 years or so. And mostly because it had been such a long time, without him seeing any way to make this dream come true, he had pretty much given up on it. One day, he went for a walk to distract himself from the fact that he hadn’t been successful with his jobs applications for quite some time and passed by a public library. His gut feeling guided him to go inside, although he had never even been in that particular street before. He started browsing through books and felt drawn to grab one of them, when a business card fell out of the book. Believe it or not, the card belonged to a Canadian business man. Our guy recognised it for the sign that it was and contacted them. And the The story has a true happy ending – the Canadian business owner employed the English man, who moved to Canada and has been living there ever since.

Remembering this story then got me on a roll and I realised that I heard countless stories, just like it. People who got back together with their high-school love, sometimes after 50 or 60 years; people who have been told that they were infertile and believed this for decades but then became parents after all; or some creative spirits who never thought, they would do anything with their talent suddenly becoming successful…The list actually goes on and on.

I have been thinking about possible motives of people, advertising the concept of ‘false hope’, a lot. Often they may mean well, they may worry that you might get hurt….but sometimes, I think, you need to question their motives, especially when you’re dealing with an abusive person. They just might not want you to be happy and fulfil your own dreams, because the happier and more fulfilled you’ll get, the more they will lose their control over you. Whenever somebody is cautioning you to ‘not get your hope up’, you should ask yourself: Is there something they might get out of you not being hopeful?

Personally, I believe, there is no such thing as false hope. Hope is simply the essence of not giving up. As Abraham Hicks were once saying: “You cannot give up on a big dream!”

So, remembering all of those real life stories, helped me to remind myself that I do believe in the validity of hope, that dreams can come true and that some things are indeed meant to happen for you. I believe that if you cannot let go of a dream for years and sometimes even for decades, it means that it is yours to experience.

If we really want something, it is simply not in our human nature to give up hope. This ‘thing’, we want means something to us – is all that is. And dreams and visions are meant to be pursued, they are with us for a reason. Especially, when the reason is to move forward with your life and heal from abuse.

Never give up.