This series is focusing on the issue of struggling with focusing on your own needs. The series begins here.
Here is the next part of the reader’s email:
I think it’s probably a very important part of healing to “tell your story” but does it become selfish to spend so much time and emotion on yourself? Wait that doesn’t sound right. There’s a part of me that wants certain other people to know what happened to me but then I struggle with thinking that all I want is some misguided attention.
Yes, telling your story is crucial to healing. You were silenced as a child, so you need to have a voice in adulthood. For me, it was crucial that I post each flashback over at Isurvive, which was my way of “shouting from the rooftops” that the abuse happened as I told the details publicly. People in Australia could read what had happened to me – that was empowering to me. I also needed the validation of being believed because, for the first several months, I had a very hard time believing myself.
The “normal” state of being should be for every person to spend some time and emotion on him- or herself. Everyone needs some downtime to enjoy being alive. Life is not just about getting things done – we need to “stop and smell the roses.” Not only do child abuse survivors have a hard time stopping to smell the roses – they have trouble believing that it is okay even to notice the roses. Life needs to be about balance. There is a time to “do,” but there is also a time to “be.”
If you had cancer, wouldn’t you undergo chemo treatments? Consider therapy and the time invested as the chemo of your soul. Your soul is filled with emotional “cancer” from the abuse. Don’t you deserve to heal your soul just as much as a cancer patient deserves to heal her body?
What you wrote about the fear of “misguided attention” resonated deeply with me because I have been there. For the first time, I allowed myself to go to the deepest depths of the pain and sob. There isn’t a word in the English language for the wracking sobs that came out of my body. I was making sounds that did not even sound human, and I experienced emotional pain that I did not believe was even survivable.
In the midst of this, a thought came in my head (from an alter part) that I was just doing this for attention. I looked around my completely empty house and yelled out, “From whom!?!! Nobody is here!!” This was such a breakthrough moment for me. For the first time, I braved facing the pain, and I recognized that I was not trying to get anyone’s attention – I was just trying to heal.
It is okay to have needs. It is okay to invite others into your pain (when you are ready). It is okay to invest the time and money in therapy to help you learn how to heal. It is also okay for life to sometimes be about you.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
Hi Faith,
Its remarkable how at times your blog posts simultaneously hit on issues I am dealing with.
I shared with someone who is very close to me how my abuse has affected me. I was told the classic “that happened when you we little you need to forget it and move on” That broke my heart especially since I thought he would be someone that could understand the difficulties I am struggling with as a result of my abuse.
After I finished crying I wrote him a letter excerpted here:
“…it was my own fault I knew what a conversation like that would bring. Couldn’t help the tears. They are tears of disappointment not of sadness. For what ever reason I had hoped you would understand and maybe even acknowledge that I am finally on the right track to changing positively and facing what troubles me. Why I feel I need that acknowledgment from you is beyond me. Maybe its the sometime big brother in you I am looking to….
…it has been somewhat important for me to have your understanding and support during this difficult time. But I do honestly understand how someone wouldn’t understand, it has been hard for me to take in what I am going through. I forget that I’m the one that has to face this, not anyone else. We won’t talk of it again.”
I thought about it…we have trouble accepting our memories and out own truth about the abuse; to ask others who have not had endured abuse and lived with the pain and problems it causes to understand, is like asking us to understand what its like to live life free of being triggered, free of panic attacks, free of thought of self-harm. We don’t know what its like to have a life free of those horrible memories and thinking we made them up and are just trying to get attention. I just became part of a support group. It was my turn to tell my story last night…as I sobbed uncontrollably, I said ” …sometimes I think I’m making it up to get attention…” Now if I am having trouble accepting my truth, asking others to may be a tall order.
It may be selfish for us to be angry that others don’t understand and offer us the validation we seek. This is hard stuff to deal with. We as survivors have to deal with it, others don’t. Seeking support is important,but sometimes I think it can be an imposition. We have no idea what we are triggering in others when we tell them our story…
Fat Girl Oreo
Great article!
I think those who say we only want attention are partially right. When I was a kid, no one listened to me, I was ignored – and look what happened to me. There are several littles in my mind who NEED some ATTENTION. They need to be heard, they desperately need someone to listen so their little hearts can feel safe. So, yes, I need some attention and there’s not one bit of it misguided. We all deserve to be heard. I’ve put it down on the list of “basic human right”.
Great post.
Grieving is selfish work. I feel that telling what happened is very important. It is hard work and hard work just to know what happened. Then I have to deal with the effects.
I sometimes feel it is OK to spend the time on healing so that I can do more. That does not work for me.
I feel that if you are really worried about trying to get attention than that is not what it is all about. On the other hand there are some who have the DX of DID that are about attention and they get it.
i sometimes do sculptures. I would love to do one in memory of those that never got to share their pain.
Hey Ya’ll,
I have struggled with this one also… and for myself have come to the conclusion that what we do NOT get in our childhoods, we find a way to get in our adulthoods, even if it means stealing. This is not because we are bad, and not only SAS do it… ALL humans do it~ As I see it, it’s just the way nature works with regard to the need for balance.
Attention is essential to children, and if you got negative attention and/or no attention, there is a big gaping hole in your development and your soul. That hole needs to be filled. Some fill it with food, exercise, work, sex, alcohol, etc… allowing yourself to receive attention and validation from others and yourself, is self centered in a good way. Not selfish. It is filling that hole with healing so that the scales can be returned to normal, and once you feel balanced, can manage giving to yourself and others from a more even playing field.
Please allow yourselves (all of them) this positive self centered journey through healing. You all deserve it… and much much more.
Peace and good luck,
mia
Hello all of you,
thank you very much for the post and all the answers. What is written here responds so much in my life at the moment. And it seems to be the first group/blog I found that shares my experiences.
My family always told me that I was such a silent child, that never asked for any attention. But as I work with what happened I realise why I was like that.
I think we deserve that attention but we have to be carefull where we search for it. But the more the healing goes on the more we learn were the right place is to find it.
thank you yours lsbee
Iabee56,
Good point about being where we search for attention. I might add from who and how.
Michael
Thank you so much for posting this article it really helped.
the responses written to faith’s entry are so helpful to read.
thank you. for me, i find myself believing that any positive attention i get is undeserved or that those who give it do so reluctantly. i find that asking someone to listen or to help – even with a small matter unrelated to my childhood – is almost too painful to consider. i terrifies me to ask for help or attention. i desparately want to but i am too afraid to risk being laughed at or shot down in flames – what happened to me as a girl. as a child and teenager, i twisted the rapes around in my head so that i saw them as a way to get the touch and nuturance i was otherwise cut off from. as an adult i cannot always [if ever] trust myself to interpret other people’s intentions correctly. for me the only way to find the attention i need in order to have my story witnessed and validated is for me to pay fo rthat attention. so i pay my psychiatrist a lot of money to listen to me. i don’t know if that says anything about society in this day and age – that i am to afraid to ask for the help of another person in my community and that i feel too unworthy of taking even 10 minutes of their time. i know that i would be there for someone else [and i have been on many occasions] but to ask someone else to be there for me is way beyond my abilities. but if i pay for that attention it seems ok – at least the person is being compensated for having to listen to my shit. i do not know whether i shall ever feel worthy of accepting without giving in return. i do not know whether i shall ever feel worthy at all.
I have been through counseling for childhood abuse, and yes, it is a selfish time, but it is also a very constructive time. Working through the healing process allows you to emerge as the person you are supposed to be, no longer trapped by the past. For me, the hardest part was letting go of protective behaviors that helped me survive as a child that had become destructive as an adult. I have never publicly talked about my abuse to protect my parents. But telling others offers help to them and to yourself. It reinforces that you are not the victim, and you have moved forward with your life. Keeping secrets has really hurt my family; it leads to a superficial life lacking meaning and true love. I created beautiful pendants to help others celebrate the success of battling cancer, grieve over the loss of a pet, celebrate the first birthday of a child, but I had purposefully not looked at abuse because I did not want to draw attention to it. Shame on me. There is much to celebrate for overcoming abuse or an abusive past. It takes a lot of courage. My pendants are worn as you are going through counseling and then you celebrate your breakthroughs by planting the pendant to grow into beautiful flowers. I am sorry that I did not offer this before. I look forward to responses to my post.
Hi, Tina.
Can you provide a link for where to purchase the pendants?
– Faith
Yes,
http://www.futureoxygencards.com/shop/pendants.aspx
Thank you for all of your hard work Faith.
Hi:
I can identify with being told to “forgive and forget.” Or “just move on.” “Put the past behind you.” “You need to let this go.” Often by people in the church(es) I have been in. (Thankfully I am no longer in this type of church situation but go to one that has a large counseling center and my pastor has even gone to see my therapist three times to try to understand DID and how to help me).
But I have been told some pretty bad stuff that shut me down sometimes. I think it important to tell the story. I tell it not for attention but because I want people to understand me mostly and where I am coming from. (These are people close to me of course!)
I also tell it when I see it could help other abuse survivors. Yay. When given the opportunity.
I am much farther along now, but when I was in college I was absolutely crushed when my campus pastor told me one night that I needed to not tell people (especially other Christians) about the abuse I suffered “because it hurt their ears.” Apparently, they needed to stay pure and innocent and it hurt their ears. Infuriating right?
*shrug*
DID Student
Thank you for sharing your stories with us. It is very difficult to write about this insidents when you have to go back in time and remember what you felt at that moment. It takes courage to do so. Thank you!