CW abuse and long term effects
I am not an easy person to be close to. I know this and I wish I could change it. I spend a lot of time reflecting on why this is and what I can do about it.
I used to be a lot easier to be around. I was calmer, quieter and much less likely to ruffle any feathers or make any demands. Looking back, that was a carefully cultivated behaviour. I got through everything by developing a special sort of invisibility. I didn’t stand out. I was mostly compliant and never demanding. I never really analysed it at the time, but I even avoided the majority of teenage angst.
Now, as I look back, I realise that not drowning in teenage angst was an indicator of a disconnected connection between who I was and my feelings. There are many different metaphors to explain it and I have explored many of them over time. The idea of wall, shells etc come close to describing it but they don’t quite fit. Today, I have come upon one which feels much more fitting. I am tethered to my feelings, my emotions, my needs and my interactions. At times, the tether is really wound in and everything is in direct connection with me. At others, the tether has been played out and I am distantly connected. Not surprisingly, the longer the thread is that tethers me, the less the intensity of the feelings I experience. It’s both seductively reassuring and scary at the same time. It reassuring because the diminished intensity makes the world a safer and less challenging place. It’s scary because sometimes the thread feels so fragile and frayed that I am not always sure that I will be able to find my way back.
This disconnection started as a coping strategy when I was abused. When the abuse happened, I protected myself by totally hiding my mind and retreating. When my pleas for it to stop didn’t work, I shut down. Afterwards, I couldn’t process what had happened so I went through the motions of life, doing things but not quite fully connected.
My self protection instincts were so strong that I blocked out what had happened and that worked until my mid-thirties when it all came crashing down. Triggered by a new life event, I suddenly remembered. I remembered everything and was overwhelmed with desolation, emotional pain and the feeling that if I could hide something so huge from myself, then I no longer could trust my mind, memories, experiences and responses.
Nearly ten years on from that, I am a different person. Therapy and hard work have resolved most of the hangovers of abuse. I refuse to be defined by things that were done to me. I fight and I am instantly angry if anyone implies I am fragile or damaged and I absolutely hate it if anyone uses abuse as an explanation of my likes.
All of this leaves a problem though. My abuse, and especially my suppression of all awareness, has moulded me. My dealing with it and the changes that it brought precipitated the break down of my marriage. I needed to talk. I needed to explore who I was. I needed to be able to see who I was through interactions with people I trusted. At the beginning, I appreciated when my Ex told me that nothing had changed for him, that I was still the same person. The problem was that I had changed. My foundations of self had been ripped away and I was having to rebuild them. As time went on, the fact that he wasn’t engaging with what was happening to me meant that there was a widening gulf between who I was and who he knew. It took a long time for me to recognise that the silence in our communication on this suffocated and killed our relationship.
Now, I am aware that people close to me have to know me both when I am completely engaged and when I am disconnected and holding on to that thread. They need to know me as the strong and stubborn person I am as well as understanding the screwed up mess I can be. They need to understand my jagged vulnerability without ever making me feel labelled as fragile or treated as a problem. When I reflect on all of that, I realise that trying to find the right path through all of that is hard and as even I can’t predict what I will need from day to day, then other people are bound to get it wrong sometimes. That’s OK as long as we listen to each other and stay away from blame.
Thank you for the raw glimpses you offer in everyday interaction, and here. I am always grateful to be someone who is allowed to get it wrong sometimes and use those experiences to learn a little more of who you are, my beloved friend Honey. Real,interesting people are complicated, endlessly dimensional, and are the only ones for me. xoxo
Thank you, lovely. I am very touched by your comment. 😘
Oh, Honey…this resonate so deeply and on such a reactive, intuitive level that I honestly don’t know what to say. You wrote about things that I’ve only been able to allude to in my own life and writing with so much grace and bravery and eloquence. I wish that neither of us had experienced things that would create this sort of mirror, but the fact that you voiced your experience with such clarity has shaken and focused me. Suddenly, I’m able to engage my emotional experiences much more clearly and I’m so grateful. Thank you. You are a phemonmenal, strong, complicated, majestically self-actualized woman and I love you tremendously. Xxx
I wish neither of us had those experiences either. I wish I could make your journey easier. I had to sit and let the power of that compliment soak into me before I could reply. I love you too.
You are such a beautiful person. Your reflection on how things have changed you, what it has done to you to keep things suppressed for so long, the influence on your marriage and your self-knowledge of how and who you are now – I admire that! I admire you!
Rebel xox
I wish we could share another glass of wine. I don’t know what to say when people say they admire me – but thank you so much. Xxx
Thank you for sharing your experience and how your coping mechanisms affected your interpersonal communication. I’m so very glad that you found a therapist you trust. So much love to you.