Deck,
It's a week down the road since you posted on this subject, and rereading your original post and the comments by myself and others, I thought of something further that's worth bearing in mind here.
I think it's important to realize that survivors have very good reasons for holding themselves in such low esteem. First, we don't know we are doing this! We view the world through our feelings, so for us the distorted picture we have is reality.
This phenomenon reminds me of some of Monet's later paintings, where the colors are dominated by shades of red, yellow and orange. When I first saw that I thought, oh, okay, this is just the effect he wanted to achieve. But no. He was suffering from an eye complaint at the time, and he was SEEING his subjects in those colors. He took what he saw for reality and painted that distorted vision of reality.
I think we do the same thing, and it's not difficult to figure out why we hang on to this mistaken vision of things, even at the cost of our own self-esteem. This is the view of the world that abuse taught us. As kids we were asking questions - perhaps only subconsciously - about why all these bad things were happening to us. Accepting the idea that it was all our own fault, we came to the conclusion that this was what we deserved. We thought we really were THAT worthless.
It's precisely this feeling that continues to plague us as adults. I liked the way Rik lists his accomplishments and the proofs of his character; I could do the same and so all the other guys here. So why do we hang on to that feeling that, as Rik puts it, "I see myself as less of a man than I am".
I think we do that because it's part of the way we explained things as kids; it's just not possible to throw away one bit without addressing the whole problem. It would be like going to a pile of firewood and saying I want that piece at the bottom. Well, sorry! - no can do! To get to that one you have to take apart the whole pile.
If we realize these things I think it makes it easier for us to address the problem you illustrate at the end of your post:
Sometimes it seems its easier not to feel. It seems like everything is always going to be there and never going to get better. I don't think there will ever be any passion, little joy, just lots of pain. Sometimes it seems like it would be better to be numb and feel nothing.
A lot of guys feel exactly like that, Deck; you are not alone. But could it be that here you are being too hard on yourself and perhaps expecting things to move forward faster than is really possible? I think that once we understand why this one is so difficult, it becomes easier to accept whatever progress we can make and avoid trashing ourselves for what is really the normal pace of things for survivors in general.
At the end of the day, these feelings come from the abuse and don't prove who you really are. They don't reflect anything negative about you; they simply confirm how terrible the things were that were done to you.
You CAN get past this. Like so much else about recovery, it just takes time.
Much love,
Larry
how untrue it is, we are not only worty but deserving.) people have no clue as to our pain they only know what we tell them. i struggle to remember that at times. when i walk in to a room of new people and see no one i know that feeling will come on as strong as the ocean. yet it only takes one person to hold back the tide.
I think there's a very good reason for that.