Dismaying Story #136: A Recipe for Emotional Healing

Dear Andrew,

I read Dismaying Story #100: Getting Past a Rape and it struck a deep chord within me. I grew up in an emotionally and physically abusive house and was kicked out when I was 13 by my brother’s father. (I am the oldest of three, each with different fathers). He kicked me out for eating his Oreo cookies. Mom moved me into an apartment across town where I lived by myself for several months. She would come by after work and check on me, then go back to his house with my brother and sister.

A man broke in one night and raped me. I don’t even know what color he was because he put a sheet over him, and then placed it over me. When I was about 15-16, the man I babysat for would bring me home at night, after first making a stop in a dark elementary school parking lot, where he would force me to perform oral sex on him while he touched me. This was a pattern repeated multiple times. He was very well-known in the community (still is), a successful businessman, handsome, well-liked, wealthy, married with two children. I couldn’t tell anybody, not even mom, because she thought he was so wonderful.

Another reason I couldn’t tell her was that she didn’t initially believe I was raped. My brother’s father would touch me inappropriately at various times and when I told her, she didn’t believe that either. She said I was imagining it. She wouldn’t have believed me about this other man either.

I am in counseling with a therapist who specializes in PTSD. He told me that I need to forgive, not for the rapists, but for me. Only thing is, I don’t know how to do that. I understand the logic behind his words, but that is all I understand.

The man who I babysat for is now 71, he was in his 40s at the time. Some years ago, I called the police and they said there was a statute of limitations and if I reported him, called him out, or in any manner tried to do anything about it now, this man could sue me for slander. There is so much hate and anger in me that I don’t know how to rid myself of it. Realizing that I am only poisoning myself doesn’t help me get rid of the violent emotions inside of me.

Is there some guidepost to forgiveness? Like I told my counselor, I am a great cook and can follow any recipe I find, but forgiveness is ethereal. There seems to be no recipe to follow. I can't grasp it in my hands, look at it, smell it, taste it, mold it, and so I don't know how to do it.

Signed, Feeling Trapped By My Emotional Pain

Dear Feeling Trapped,

First of all, I am so sorry for the pain you’ve had to endure, both in the past and also today. I haven’t lived through your experiences and so I can’t (and don’t want to) pretend that I understand what you’ve gone through. Only someone who has walked in your shoes can truly say “I understand.” It’s clear, though, that the events you describe are horrific. It’s no surprise that trying to heal from all of that is tremendously challenging.

I’m glad you’re working with a therapist, and one who has specialized credentials. I urge you to continue. No doubt you already know this, but just to be clear for anyone who might read this post: Any thoughts that I might offer should never be considered as an alternative to working with a professional. Nonetheless, you’ve asked for my help and I certainly would like to do whatever I can.

If you haven't already done so, I urge you to forgive yourself for whatever guilt you might still have regarding your role in the abuse. You did not cause it ... not ANY of it. There is no behavior that a teenage girl could do that would / should cause any type of abuse to come your way. You didn't invite it and you didn't deserve it, not in any way. None of it was your fault.

You asked about forgiveness. You want to rid yourself of hate and anger and violent emotions. Can someone in your position really decide to ‘forgive’ the hurtful people from your past, and therefore get past those emotions? And what does forgiveness mean in that context?

Some people find the word forgiveness disconcerting because we associate that word with an action directed at the tormentors. The meaning here is that you need to stop hating. You’ve spent so much time and energy on actively feeling the rage. It has consumed far too much of your life. It is horrible that those abusers and rapists ruined your past, so you need to find ways of preventing them from ruining your future as well.

No doubt your therapist has explained that this is not about absolving your abusers of their responsibility for hurting you. By getting past the hate, you are not accepting in any way that what they did is somehow okay. In fact, the process you need to go through has nothing to do with them. It’s all about healing you, and only you.

If I’m reading your letter correctly, the painful emotions have been ever present inside you for around thirty years, or even longer if we consider that you grew up in an abusive home. You’ve endured decades of negative thoughts and feelings. This is not just a set of events you need to get past; your entire lifetime has been characterized by the hate and anger. You’ve been conditioned over and over again to associate emotional pain with your memories. Every time you remember the past and feel the emotional pain, you become even more strongly conditioned to associate one with the other. Feeling the anger is not a choice you make, it’s a conditioned response … and an understandable one given what you have gone through.

I doubt very much if there is a single person on the planet who could get past that type of decades-long conditioning simply by deciding to do so. It would be staggeringly difficult to say, “Okay, as of this moment I won’t be angry at those people anymore.” Our brains just don’t work that way. It takes much more than that do undo the conditioning.

In short, this type of healing is a process, not an event.

The process starts with your decision to let go of the anger. This is a necessary step, but the decision itself is not what will lessen your anger. Instead, that decision is what starts you down the road to accomplishing a longer-term goal.

The fact that you are working with a therapist is a good indication that you have already decided you want this for yourself. I believe you are already on the road, although you may not recognize the signposts, nor where the road can take you.

Can you imagine a day in the future when the rage is gone? Or at least when it is reduced to some manageable level so you can proceed happily with your day? I bet that sounds like a tremendously tough thing to accomplish. After all, your experience so far has been that your anguish is never ending. Not only can’t you see the light at the end of the tunnel, you may not even be convinced that the tunnel HAS an opening at the end. It can be difficult to muster the courage to take the first step when the road ahead looks impossibly long.

So perhaps one way to get started with your healing process is to set a tiny goal that you have a good chance of achieving, and quickly.

What kind of goal? Well what you’re really after is to spend time without rage and hatred in your heart. Any amount of time you can spend like that is a victory. In psychological terms, each time you do that is a conditioning event where you start to associate ‘you’ with happy thoughts, rather than ‘you’ with anger. This is one way to start breaking the old familiar feedback cycle in your mind.

You can think of a conditioned response (your anger) as habitual behavior, which arises when you have certain thoughts. Right now this happens often. I’m sure you would like to reduce the frequency.

I happen to believe we don’t ‘break’ habits. Instead, we replace them with new behaviors. One starting goal you might set for yourself is to engage your mind in a more positive way. The idea is to make it so the negative emotions have no room to live inside you, even if only for a small amount of time. Maybe it’s half an hour. Heck, maybe it’s only five minutes.

The type of positive activity that will be effective for you is as individual as you are. Some people achieve inner peace through meditation or long walks. Others lose themselves in exercise or a creative activity like painting or sculpting. Perhaps talking with your therapist, a good friend or a support group allows you to spend some time basking in the light, keeping the dark at bay. Whatever turns out to work for you, each moment of peace is proof that you can exert some level of control over your situation, even if it is only briefly and even if the control is tenuous.

It’s a start. And we can even do better than that.

I’m going to take an educated guess that self esteem is part of the issue. How could it not be? Ever since you were young you’ve had people demonstrating how unimportant you must be. Your step-father valued a bag of Oreo cookies more than you. That forced your mother to choose which was more important to her, you or him. She chose him. The men who raped and sexually abused you clearly valued their momentary gratification more than your well being. Who could blame you for coming to the inescapable conclusion that you are not worth much?

Well let me tell you – those people were SO wrong. You are every bit as worthy and deserving of happiness as every other person on the planet. It’s important that you start to gain faith in this as part of your emotional healing. You need to recapture the feelings of self worth that those people did their best to steal from you. By discovering how great you really are, you will recover the lost treasure – you will recover yourself!

In my experience, the best way for you to discover how great you are is for others to show how much they appreciate having you in their life. That’s why I suggest you choose your positive activities with one word in mind – giving.

When we give of ourselves, we usually get back much more. I’m betting that will be ultra true for you. Here are some ideas you might consider.

Drop by an old folks home and spend some time reading to the residents. Many dog owners are shut ins, elderly, or workaholics … so take their dog out for some exercise. The next time you’re out with your girlfriend, tell her how glad you are that she is your friend. Help your co-worker meet her deadline, even when (especially when) it’s not your job to do so. Hold a door open for the person behind you.

The possibilities are endless, the opportunities are every day, and the payoffs can be tremendous. The personal satisfaction you gain will momentarily help to crowd out the hate. Each time you hear “Thank you” and “You’re amazing” – well, those kind words will start to erect protective barriers of self esteem. Over time those fences will make it harder and harder for the anger to find its way back in.

So that’s my recipe for forgiveness. Over time, find repeated opportunities to re-learn what an amazing person you are, crowding out the anger as frequently and in as many ways as you can.

Here are a few ingredients that are important for making the recipe work:

• Be patient. Don’t become discouraged if it seems like the process is taking a long time. You’ve spent decades getting to this point, so give yourself permission to spend whatever time it takes to help yourself.
• Don’t try to do it all alone. Look for help wherever you might find it, whether that’s with friends, professionals, books, online, wherever. Make use of whatever seems to work for you.
• Recognize that partial victories are still victories. Finding yourself angry from time to time doesn’t mean you are failing. If you can eventually hold the pain at bay enough so it’s manageable, that is still a huge victory.
• Expect to go through peaks and valleys. Don’t let the dark days convince you that the good days will never return.
• Celebrate your victories, no matter how small. Use them to help motivate you that gradual success is not only possible, it is inevitable!

On that last point, here’s one thing you really need to understand: You’ve already achieved several victories! Despite the tremendous hardships you’ve gone through, you’ve survived and become a person with some obviously strong life skills. You were able to recognize and admit your challenges, form a goal to find help, identify and obtain appropriate professional help, listen to and really hear his advice, and work hard to find a way to implement the advice. You communicate well and you’re clearly a problem solver. And I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface.

I can assure you of this – you’ve already begun the process of healing and you’ve already achieved some significant victories. Take heart in that and keep going.

Again, I am so sorry for what you’ve had to endure. It is definitely possible to re-gain your happiness, and it sounds like you’re doing the right things to get there. Please know that at least one person in the universe is pulling hard for you to do exactly that!

All the best,
Andrew

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Dismaying Story #95: Forgiveness Is A Gift You Give Yourself

Dear Andrew,

About six months ago, my boyfriend of two and a half years and I broke up. We still love each other, but since we were finishing university and were embarking on significant lifestyle changes, we decided that it was best to call it off, rather than fighting to keep together a relationship that was already falling apart. (The one thing we shared was that we loved each other. We wanted very different things out of life; had very different interests; different values; different approaches to life. My family didn't like him, he didn't like them. Once we finished university we could no longer sustain the relationship we had enjoyed as students.

About three months ago, I met a guy that was the polar opposite of my Ex. We hit it off right away, and began to hang out on a daily basis, on a platonic level, after work, and it seemed like everything we talked about just brought us even closer, and brought to light more similarities between us. About a week later, he expressed a romantic interest in me. I was flattered, and admitted that I was attracted to him as well, but expressed hesitation to get involved in anything with him because a) we are coworkers; and b) I was just coming out of a very serious relationship, and didn't want to start something on the rebound. He agreed to take it slowly and just see where things went. However, he didn't stop pursuing me fairly aggressively. And I didn't object to being pursued in this way. It was nice to feel desirable and wanted, especially since my Ex had cut himself off from me entirely.

What transpired was a fairly intense relationship that remained unlabeled and underhanded. Because we are coworkers, and didn't want to become fodder for office gossip, we conducted a lot of our romantic activities on the sly. About three weeks in, my Ex showed up at my front door, crying, and begging me to take him back. Although I had spent three months wishing for this situation, I finally felt as though I was moving on, and told him that I was seeing someone else. A few days later, the new guy took me to his home before a party we were going to attend together, and we slept together for the first time. The entire experience felt dirty and wrong. Two days later, he said that we needed to talk and told me that he felt that our relationship had come together in a very dysfunctional way, and it made him uncomfortable, and he didn't want to end up hurting me in the same way he had hurt girls in the past, so he thought we should stop seeing each other.

I agreed that we had rushed things and jumped into a sexual relationship that I, at least, was not ready to have. We agreed to rewind a bit, and revert to the "dating" stage, and take things one step at a time. The next day, at work, as we went to get our morning coffee, he said that he had thought about it some more, and wanted us to be entirely platonic. That evening, as we chatted online, he explained that after we had slept together, he had started thinking about a serious relationship that had ended about two years ago, in which he and his girlfriend had been on the verge of engagement, before he panicked, and she gave up on him. He said that in retrospect, he thinks he should have married her, and every relationship he has been in since has ended up being a train-wreck, because of his inability to connect, and he claimed that he didn't want me to become part of his "relationship chaos and carnage roadshow."

This made (and continues to make) me very angry. I was entirely upfront with him from the very beginning about my reservations about getting into a relationship, and my personal and emotional difficulties. He knew that I'd been struggling with depression for a few years; he knew that I used to cut; he went in with all the cards on the table. He also knew what his own background was. But he chose to not share any of this information with me; he chose to lead me to believe that he really wanted to be with me. He chose to convince me that he was looking for a serious relationship. I feel used, and dirty. If he felt that he wasn't ready for a relationship, he shouldn't have started one. In effect, he told me what I wanted to hear, and toyed with my emotions until I began to believe that I might actually be able to be happy with him; and the moment I slept with him, he lost interest and backed out. I've tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, because I DO still have to work with him, and see him five days a week, but the more I think about it, the more used I feel. I feel as though he took advantage of my vulnerability and naivete, and turned me into a notch on his bedpost.

Am I being unreasonable? Because of him, I destroyed any possibility of getting back together with my Ex, as well, and that makes the anger even more intense. I want to stop hating him and I want to stop loathing myself, but I have no idea how to do this. The worst part is that deep down, I really want to believe that he's a good guy, and that once he sorts himself out, we will end up together.

Signed, Hurting and Hating

Dear Hurting and Hating,

Both of the guys in this story told you, "I don't want to be with you." This is a difficult message to hear because it bashes your feelings of self worth and clashes with your strong desire to make a relationship work. More than that, they delivered this message in an ambivalent, on-again, off-again fashion, which makes it even more difficult for you to decide what you want and predict what will happen. You spent three months wishing for your ex to show up and you still hope to end up with the co-worker.

For your own sanity, the first thing I recommend you do is realize neither of these guys is the one for you. Regardless of the reasons, "I don't want to be with you" is a pretty clear indication that they don't want to be with you. Why should a dynamic bundle of personable hotness like you put up with that? You deserve (and need) a better deal than that. You gave it a try with each of them and it didn't work out. You learned some lessons and got your feelings bruised. If you step back and look at the big picture, though, you will realize that you are still a whole person and you are now free to get on with life, which hopefully includes meeting Mr. Right and having many wonderful bowls of ice cream together. Don't hold on to the flimsy hope of getting back into one of these damaged partnerships. Doing so will only prevent you from finding a fulfilling relationship. Put them behind you and move on, and do it today.

Regarding your co-worker, you did not destroy your chances with your ex "because of him." If you and your ex were meant for each other, if things were great between you, then (a) you wouldn't have broken up (this happened because of real problems), and (b) no fresh-off-the-vine new boyfriend would have been enough to make you turn away the crying ex. You would have swept him into your arms and held on tight. It didn't work out between you and your ex because of the problems between the two of you, not because of your co-worker.

When your ex showed up and you "felt like you were moving on," that was because you were moving on. You were not at your final destination, though, just the next stop along your life journey. You may feel like you wasted your time with your co-worker. I would argue, though, that dating your co-worker helped you understand there was life after your ex, which is something you needed to find out. While hurtful in the end, this brief relationship also fulfilled some of your needs for a while. Rather than focusing entirely on the painful aspects of this experience, it might help you to realize that some good came from it as well.

Then there is your anger over feeling used and poorly treated by your co-worker, about all the things he should have done differently. Naturally you are interpreting the relationship from your point of view. If you are honest, I suspect you'll have to admit to yourself that you entered the relationship because of what it might mean for your life; it made you feel desirable and wanted, like you were moving on, etc. You did not say to yourself, "I should start dating this guy because it will help him feel good about himself." No, we enter relationships because of our own hopes and needs. That doesn't mean you don't care about the other person, just that your own viewpoint dominates your thinking at the beginning.

This is evident in your letter, which interprets what happened only from your point of view. This is natural and understandable, but I believe you can gain a greater understanding of what happened if you now step back and also consider events from his viewpoint.

You now know that he has been carrying a big load of emotional baggage for at least two years. He entered your relationship in a state of weakness, and was hopeful this would be the one to break him out of it. He desperately wanted this to succeed so he could get past his problems. Of course he wouldn't dump his baggage on you at that point. Suppose he said, "Just so you know, I'm a total emotional mess inside and I can't get over my old flame and I have sabotaged every one of my recent relationships with my dysfunction." That would have you (and most women) making excuses and heading for the door in short order, which is exactly the opposite of what he was desperate to achieve. And in the eternal optimism of the dopamine-driven early stages of dating, he truly hoped and believed he would never have to tell you this, because THIS one was finally going to work out for him, dammit.

But it didn't, in fact couldn't. He needs to get over his internal anguish and forgive himself for his past decisions, and no new relationship can help him do that. He needs to heal inside before he will be able to fulfill his end of a functional relationship.

But he didn't know that when he started dating you, and in all probability he still doesn't realize it. You say he should have told you, and he should have realized, and he should have known better than to start something with you. That is the same as saying he should be aware of the nature of his dysfunction and should be able to get past it. Clearly he hasn't been able to do that; he is still mired in his past and can't see a way out. "Except maybe," he thinks, "if I find someone else, that will make the memories go away," which is what he tried with you.

You feel like he got the sex he wanted and then lost interest. I don't see it that way. I believe he failed in achieving what he wanted (to feel a strong attachment for you, thereby erasing his painful past). He ended it with you because his pain persisted in spite of how your relationship had progressed. He wasn't happy to notch his bedpost; he was miserable that his hopes didn't pan out and he was right back where he started ... and he had hurt you in the process. Considered from this point of view, his statement that he didn't want to hurt you any further was probably sincere.

Yes, one could argue that he might have spared you the pain if he had been more honest about himself up front. And you could beat yourself up wondering if you should have seen the signs and avoided getting involved with him. None of this helps you, though. All it does is make the pain persist longer than necessary.

Do you really need to assign blame? How does this help you? You need to forgive him for hurting you. And don't do it for his sake; forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. It is the way you free yourself from the pain and allow yourself to gain closure, to move past the recriminations and brooding. I truly believe your co-worker did what he did based on hopefulness. Perhaps this realization will help you feel compassion for his pain, as well as forgiveness for sharing it with you.

Similarly, you need to forgive yourself for being human. We all want to feel desirable and wanted, and you shouldn't beat yourself up for trying to find happiness. I've yet to see a crystal ball that really works, so at the beginning there was no way you could have been expected to know how things would work out.

A better approach would be to open your heart in case Mr. Right walks by later today. And in case he happens to be on his way to an ice cream parlor.

All the best,
Andrew

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