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arghilles

Registrant
Hi again!
Even though I feel a bit embarassed to write about this stuff I think I have to.
This is basically how my mind works:
If I just let things be and project what I need to project this world becomes a very scary place and I try to survive in it. What happens is that I need to make myself feel dirty all day long and I also need to make others feel bad about themselves. What is my gain?
I wonder and wonder...
It is obvious that I don't want people coming near me. People who approach for several reasons, sexual or just friendship become rejected and threatening.
So if i think that I am dirty I guess my mind tells me that now at least no one wants to be with me and I can be left alone. Why doesn't this feeling go? I always have to regain control over it to feel better and assert myself again. It won't go. Does this mean that my inner child will never or just simply won't trust other people? Why is he so stubborn???
Also he doesn't allow himself to feel weak or tender. If I have wept I instantly afterwards feel an urge to make me feel dirty. I can numb my senses, get away from real life that way. My therapist thinks that I evoke exactly the same feeling I got after the abuse when i was little. Why won't it go?

Many days when I have fought and told myself that I am not dirty I get so scared cause the person evolving is unknown to me.
Is the other way around better, feeling small and dirty and not wanted, not needing anyone? MY child certainly thinks so.

Does anyone recognize any of this?

I won't write more now cause it might just be a mess anyway.
I am grateful for being in this group. Lately I have began to read many posts and it helps to know that there are more of us dealing with similar issues.
It is just so tiring and I am so stubborn.

Erik
 
Erik,

First of all, I don't believe that you are actually dirty. I have to practice telling myself that thoughts about myself like that are false I

have to counter all the years of practice I have had giving myself negative messages. These started with my abusers and I repeated them for years and years until recently.

Sometimes progress seems rapid. Sometimes it seems stuck. I believe, however, that the brain can be retrained.

Second, your inner-child may be stubborn because you aren't or haven't found a way to listen to him. If you're like me, abusers shut him up, maybe even threatened him if he did speak. And the, once again, I spent years not listening to him to the point that he was totally shut up for a long time.

No wonder he is stubborn. Be his friend. I have started doing that and it feels very nice and healing.

Brett
 
Hi Brayton!

I guess I only treat my inner child badly. Tonight I have tried to change that behaviour and it goes a little better.
I have a lot of growing up to do.

Thank you for your reply.

Erik
 
A friend of mine has made a comment to me of how I need to balance things. If something good happens, or I somehow feel good about myself, I feel the need to balance that out by doing harm to myself, or thinking worse things of myself. It is the old brain programs, that we are dirty and deserve pain or bad things. Because it is what we are used to, that does not make it right.

I think it takes a period of time to reteach our brain, to relearn the things we are and deserve. It is not impossible, but our brains did not begin to think that way in a short time, but over many years. It takes time to retrain our thinking. But being aware of it, I think that makes it a little easier, and more likely to happen.

I wish you luck.

Leosha
 
Hi Leosha!

That is how my brain works, ie if I feel a little better I need to make me feel bad again.

It might leave when I feel more safe. At this point in my life I am not comfortable being me.
Too many things that still scare me from my past. I am trying to let them surface and tell myself that I don't have to be afraid anymore.
I was scared then but today I can at least try to relax even though it feels bad.

Thank you for your support,

Erik
 
Erik
we have to ALLOW ourselves to feel good about ourselves. Give youself permission to say "Erik, I feel good !"

I know that sounds like some sort of 'well meaning crap' but I believe that the simple fact of remaining stuck in our old thinking about not deserving to feel good is the point that needs to be recognised and altered.

You mentioned your 'inner child' - and young Erik is one of the key figures in giving you that permission.
He has to feel safe, secure and free of guilt and shame to give that permission to you.
Go back and find young Erik, enter the good part of what what he felt as a young boy, remember the good days with those people who were good to you.
Try to remember how young Erik thought and dealt with what was happening all around him - not just the abuse, but everything.
Do you know a boy of the same age as you were when the abuse took place ? if you do look hard at that boy and project young Erik onto him, ask youself if you would have been that much different to the boy you're looking at ? I doubt that he would.

We make the mistake of 'remembering' our young selves with the adult framework we have now. It's the distorted logic that tells us "we should have resisted" - "we could have done something about it"
But a boy hasn't got that kind of thinking, reasoning or power against a manipulative adult - that's adult thinking.
Young Erik was the same as young David, we didn't have the intellectual capability to overcome what an adult was doing to us. And they shouldn't be blamed for what they didn't know or what they couldn't possibly prevent.

Take care of young Erik, he's your best friend.

Dave ( and David ;) )
 
For what it is worth:

I don't feel dirty, but I often feel like people are going to find out any second that I am really a little kid and not an adult. Once they find out they will realize that I don't know what I am doing.

There are many days still where I have to fight that feeling. On other days I just pretend I am not feeling it until my 'imaginative' feelings of being an adult become 'real' feelings.

Also, because of my damage I have always tried to control things. Lately I am working on not always needing to understand where things are going. When you wrote that you were evolving but not knowing into what, it struck a chord with me. In the last year I have felt like I lost my identity and it is only in the last few months that I felt like something was taking shape, but I have no idea what the result will be. I find this to be scary and often I will try to revert back to being a negative bastard. However, my eyes are open now and even when I revert back it never lasts long because I know there is something better.

I also have come to realize that I cannot always know how things will turn out and sometimes I have to have 'faith' close my eyes and let the sea of my life take me where I am supposed to go.

I don't know if that helps or not, but I hope something in this thread does.

Most importantly you are not dirty and this thread clearly shows you are not alone.

I hope you feel better.
 
Hey Erik - Yes, I can relate with the feelings that never "seem" to go away. My problem with this focused on knowing how to act in certain environments and being in control. All my growing up years I was made to feel like "the bad boy", responsible for all the bad things that happened to me and I knew what to do and say in that kind of environment. It felt weird when things got better because I: (1) didn't feel comfortable; (2) didn't know how to act or what to say; and (3) didn't believe it when others told me good things about myself. If anyone did positive things for me I would: (1) chase them away; (2) show them how wrong they were by showing how bad I REALLY was; or (3) withdrew and isolated from others until they finally realized the true me and said nasty things about me. No matter how hard I think I tried otherwise, I found someway to "shoot myself in my foot". I did become very successful at doing that. Even when I was among people (friends?) I felt all alone. I can give quite a few more examples, Erik!

As Dave added earlier, it wasn't until I felt better about myself and didn't need to control my environment for safety and learned news ways of acting about and with myself, that those feelings began...(not went) began to go away!

Hope this helped some. Questions? Just ask away!

Howard
 
Erik,

This is all very recognizable.

There is no gain in making yourself dirty all day long and making others feel bad about themselves. This is recreating the feeling that you were dirty, the one the perp(s) wanted you to have.

These are all methods of building a barrier between you and others that may hurt you. As you build this wall (did you remember a door is required to get out? But a door wouldn't make it as safe.) Through projecting the dirty you and the hurting those that come near you, keeps placing stones on the wall. The more you can get up the safer you will be inside. On the otherhand, the higher you build the wall the harder it is to climb back out. Then there will be just lonely you inside that wall, by yourself, until that stone wall collapses upon you.

It doesn't mean that your inner child will never trust again. It just means that you need to reach for him and let him know that you are there and that you love him and will take care of him. You need to take the steps to learn to trust. Baby steps.

You can't keep running from this. You are strong, it takes a strong man to accept this and weep for this. This is not something that needs or deserves punishment. Rather some comfort and support.

I won't go away until you make it go away. Address it and beat it.

You are fighting it, but are failing to see that the new clean you is the real you. Something to rejoice in and embrace. Not to be scared of, to chase you back into that stone fortress.
Does anyone recognize any of this?
Click to expand...
Ever so much. I have done a lot of running out of the fortress just to dive back in. But those blocks are coming down. It doesn't fit in the plans for the new me.

Bill
 
Me again,

Now there is one more thing I would like to get your opinion on. It may be slightly triggering.

It seems my mind really insists on scaring me off in some way. I have great problems concerning another man's penis because of the abuse.
If I think about it I usually first feel excitement and then the remaining feeling is fear. This is directly connected to what happened to me. I am just so sick of being stuck with these double feelings.

My sexuality is totally straight, but those feelings for another man's penis still come up.
Will I always be afraid of it? I have also felt much anger towards it, feelings like mutilating myself because of the resmblence I see to my perp's, my father's penis.

I think I had better not focus on it, but it comes back. If I don't I feel safer, but it is still there. The questions, the fear and my reaction in my groin.

This is a big issue.

It is difficult to get rid of a sexual stimulus.
Somehow it also gives me comfort and a kick off, the really bad side effect is that these thoughts and feelings generate guilt and fear.
If I get excited by the thought of another man's penis then if I see a woman after that feeling I get turned on by her. That sexuality is much safer.

If I start to dwell on it I work myself up to a state of much fear and panic. It can go on and on for much of the day if I don't stop it.


My mind is comfortable / used to feel all panicky. I guess I don't know what it feels like to feel safe and balanced.

Your answers to my previous questions have been very helpful. I have read through your answers many times. I am thankful for them.
That is why I adress yet another issue.

I hope I am not to forward in my questions. I am so tired of this emotion mix and I need to handle them in a good way. Usually I handle my emotions so badly that I pen myself up, not sure I use the right expression, get smaller than I am, don't assert myself.

I read in one post tonight that people around us mistake our own captivity for insecurity. That is true for me. I make myself much smaller and I get frustrated cause people seem to think I am insecure, when I know that it is only my head. However I might be much more insecure than I think.

I also wonder what other men think when another man looks there. It has happened to me that guys at work have looked down there at me and I have felt really weird then. I really feel that look.
It didn't hurt, but I guess I make a lot of something that guys who haven't been abused dwell on or perhaps may not even react to.

Finally, I come from Sweden and I wouldn't say that what I have brought up is controversial here. On the other hand I am not sure about what it is like in America. My apologies if other people take offence.

Take care,

Erik
 
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