On Friday, I published a blog entry entitled We are the Ones Who Heal Ourselves, which some readers apparently received in a different way than I intended. Please know that I would never intentionally write anything intended to judge anyone else along their healing journey – we judge ourselves enough! Let me try again to say what I was trying to say on Friday, hopefully this time with any perceived judgment removed.
I once read a metaphor about spiritual enlightenment. I will do my best to paraphrase it. One person knows the path to spiritual enlightenment, and another person seeks it. The person who knows the path can provide the directions, but the one seeking the spiritual enlightenment is the only one who can achieve it. He can choose to follow those directions or find his own path. Either way, it is about the journey, not the destination.
To apply this metaphor to healing from child abuse, you are the one on the journey to healing. Along the way, you will encounter different people (and resources) who will help (and sometimes hinder) your journey, such as therapists, books, fellow child abuse survivors, etc. Those who are in the best place to give advice are those who have been there, either healing themselves or along with someone else who has healed (such as the experienced therapist who has already traveled the journey with another child abuse survivor). However, they cannot take the journey for you.
Only you can choose to heal or not heal. Only you can choose to follow their advice or not. Sometimes the advice will be bad, and it will seem to lengthen your journey because you will seem to find yourself farther from your destination. As you heal and learn how to get into touch with your own intuition, you will get better as discerning good advice from bad.
Ultimately, I do not think that healing from child abuse is a destination to be reached so much as a journey to be taken, which is a concept I fought long and hard because I am a start-to-finish gal rather than an in-process kind of person. However, the more I heal, the more I recognize that I am not going to reach this magical place of “being healed.” Instead, the journey is more about awakening to who I already am and who I have always been. It is like the abuse “blinded” me to basic truths about myself, and the healing process is about regaining my sight. So, even when I take a wrong turn (whether due to bad advice or my own strong will), I am really no farther from my destination because I am always me. Does that make sense?
Photo credit: Hekatekris
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[…] Healing Metaphors on Healing Yourself after Child Abuse (faithallen.wordpress.com) […]
Perfect sense. 🙂
I do not see PTSD as forever or how to best mitigate it. I go with if I believe it to be forever it will be. If I concentrate on how to mitigate it than that is what I will excel at.
For me integration is a result of expressing just as being multiple was a result of not being able to express.
I have a metaphor. Ben Hogan’s wife asked him why he spent so much time practicing putting. He replied that is where I am weakest. She said but you don’t get any better. So he changed his method and concentrated on making shots where he had easier putts and he became a better putter.
I see this work as a way to express what I could not and express in a different way, which changes the way I experience life.
Finding ways to express will be a life long thing certainly made harder due to my experiences perhaps the learning I had to do will make it easier to express and discover.
Hi, Michael.
I love that story! Thank you for sharing it. :0)
– Faith
Faith,
The more I read from you, the sweeter I see that your spirit it. I am truly amazed at the sweet person that you have become inspite of all you have been through! That is a good article. I am a start-to-finish person as well. I can see what you are saying. I have been on my healing journey now for about a year and a half. Somedays- and the stretches of days seem longer each time, I feel so alive and so healed- so DONE! But then I have days when I go down and I see I have more work to do on all of this. Mostly because I can still see where I am mentally abusing myself still. I can see that this journey is a lifetime journey. I just wonder how long I am going to cling to my “safe” person who is helping me through. Will there come a time that I can let him go? Right now I do not feel like I could go forward without him.
I just “knew” when I was ready to cut back on therapy. I had less to discuss with my T at the sessions. He was always a step ahead of me and could see it coming, so he was always the one to suggest that we cut back with the understanding that I could come between scheduled sessions if I needed to.
– Faith
Hi Faith,
Thank you for writing, it all makes perfect sense to me. In fact, I liked your post from Friday, and very much relate to both the idea that we must make healing a conscious choice, and also that it is a journey and not a destination.
I’ve had a couple of uninspiring and less than helpful experiences with therapy – though that certainly does not mean that all therapy/therapists are useless; professional therapy does have value and is many times necessary.
But I’ve also learned on my way that there are other resources and things out there (books, websites, good friends, fun hobbies and other fulfilling activities, for instance) that are probably at least as important/helpful as therapy – and I think without some of those additional resources, the therapy may only go so far.
I’ve also been introduced to the concept of actually “shopping” for a therapist that is a good fit – something I had never thought of or realized I even could do before.
And then, I also ponder whether professional therapy, as useful and important as it is, is absolutely necessary for everyone… or if it possible for some people to heal without it? While it is certainly a big no-no to advise anyone against seeking therapy when they’ve been though something as damaging as child abuse, I like to think there is still hope for those who may not have access to a therapist. People choosing a healing path could at least work on building up their resources in other areas of their live, by taking care of their health, choosing supportive friends, etc. while they are working their way toward being able to afford a therapist, for instance. I guess it all comes back to the basic ideas of choices, individuality, and personal journeys. Nobody can really tell another exactly how to heal, or what is right for their journey – we can only be supportive of each other as each make our way 🙂
I am going to steal the “Start to Finish” phrase. Thank you very much. I am not going to use the gal part. Smile
One thing that I learned is that although I experience it as a start to finish thing there is much that went on that I was not aware of.
I sometimes write skits. I would tell you that it only takes me 20 min. That is because others have written it in their head.
I figured out the Rubik cube last winter. It was hard and took a long time. Before if you asked me how I learned it I would have said it is easy. You just put the stickers where they go.
I think I was a start to finish person a it was the best way to get us all going in the same direction. I think that is why I built commercial buildings and why I do permitting. Obvious start and finish.
Unfortunately this left some of us out of the accomplishment. In a way it became all about the older ones even though the younger ones were doing much work. Kinda like my parents.
Hi Faith,
I “got” your post on Friday but I would have been offended myself half a year ago when I was confronted with the same truth, packaged as a saying – similar in its meaning to the Hogan one- that went something like ” in order to hit the target , one has not to become a great shooter but become the target” and I went like “WTF?! ” To me it was a slap to my face, an insult to all my belief systems I didnt know I had until I saw my strong reaction to such a truthful saying.
I could not yet see its wisdom and healing implications but it kept hitting me nevertheless:)
Partly due to my lack of understanding processes and progresses. At that time I had no understanding of the concept of progress, I only knew perfection, the world was all still black and white and I wanted to see results fast- cheers to the start-finish-teams:)
Adhering to this statement meant for me that I would always be stuck where I was with no hope of ever feeling better…and it still would mean the same if one day I hadnt come across another saying: ” Progressing instead of being perfect- action instead of being stuck”
At that moment it hit me that there is something more to life than just being perfect. All my life being perfect had been my way of life or rather my way of surviving. I couldnt imagine that there was something else on the planet. That information that there was a thing such progress changed my life forever. Now I know that I had to look at precisely that feeling even if it meant to take two steps backwards in my thinking but it turned out it was exactly what I needed because this feeling of hopelessness, failure and despair looked at closely carried the solution already in itself. By taking a step back I came across the concept of progress itself- a huge revelation to me. I never knew that there is such a beautiful thing as progress. And I never knew that by opening my failure and resignation- feelings ,packaged as what I thought to be the ultimate obstackle that would bring me down, I would find what I was looking for within me thus becoming part of what I was so desperate to achieve. And now I am not only able but also willing to take some steps back bcos ultimately this will bring me further on my healing journey…and if I feel stuck now I am now in the awesome position to notice this more or less straight away. I rejoice in the moment knowing that feeling that way and noticing it and admitting it is a great achievement for me. It challenges my belief system of needing to be perfect because feeling stuck would mean I am not perfect, that I will not reach any goals, that I will fail so I was never able to admit what I was really thinking and feeling. It shows that the illusion of being perfect has no longer its strong hold over me that it used to have. I know this feeling of being stuck needs to be felt bcos its mine and is the key to progress and “becoming the target” 😉 I am no longer hindered from feeling my feelings by the illusion to be perfect thanks to the law of progress and me looking the illusion in the face:)
So to get back to the journey question, for me being able to “get” that concept, I first had to learn about its pre-requisite called progress. Only then was I able to connect the dots….
oh long comment…initially I only wanted to say that this topic is quite tricky to get across cos its a bit complex but that the message in your post provided great empowerment to me!
Thanks!
This is just what I needed today. It is as if a door opened in my mind and an understanding came over me that helped me get ‘unstuck’ from being in a very bad place. Now I get it…. the journey is life long for all of us. I no longer need to wonder why I am still stuck because I’m not, I’m just doing the best on the journey life gave me. Thank you!
[…] have been thinking a lot about the blog entries I wrote on Friday and Monday as well as the many comments that I received both in the comments sections as well as through […]