Thanks for the stories
Hey Guys,
I’ve been reading some of the stories on the stories board over the last few days, and I wanted to say thank you to every one who has shared their experience.
I’m struck by the depth and strength I see and by the amazing resilience. We struggle, but we’re strong.
I just wanted to give you guys all a big (((thank you))).
One of the nice things about being a survivor is meeting all the cool other guys who’ve been through the same thing and being able to part of a team of people trying to heal from this kind of problem.
I wish everyone had a support group like this; I think everybody needs one.
Sometimes in reading the other forums, I see us being awfully down on ourselves. We talk like we’re broken, standing on the edge of hope, and I know some of us are probably feeling that way right now.
Reading the stories shows me just how clearly we’re seeing the wrong side of our collective story when we treat ourselves that way or let ourselves think of ourselves that way.
The ultimate take away from those stories that I see is the simple fact that we’ve all made it through the worst things life could throw a kid, and we’ve survived. We’ve lived to tell the tale. We’re strong. We’re like soldiers who’ve fought a war and have come home. We’ve been tested. And we’ve come through. And the war is over.
We don’t have anything to be afraid of because we’ve already been through hell and survived.
Living the normal life will be a piece of cake once we realize the war is over and we’re home in the “safe” place. Sure, we’ll still have the PTSD and the sexual identity issues, etc., but we’ll be fine.
And when the inevitable problems come along, we can just remember: I’ve already been through hell and survived: after that everything should be easy because nothing will every equal that original threat we’ve already survived.
Terrified of intimacy? Go ahead and try it! After all, you’ve already been through intimacy hell once and survived. Something makes you want the roller coaster again in a different way, so get back on it. What harm can it do that you haven’t already handled?
I can already hear someone saying, but it’s too hard to trust. Just trust yourself: you’re strong: you’ve already proved you can handle it. And no matter what it is, it ain’t never gonna be as bad the first one!
You’re always already ready to survive. And you will. It’s just true.
You might complain a little bit along the way, just like the rest of us, but you’ll be fine, also just like the rest of us.
It’s OK to get knocked around a bit, when you know you know how to fall down and get up again. And we’ve all done that a million times; we just have to recognize the strength we have inside and honor it until its habit to know we’re truly strong. The stories show us that strength in all its variety.
In Buddhism in the meditation hall, sometimes one of the monks has a stick. He randomly wacks the meditators on the back, hoping the shock will send them into a heightened state of consciousness. We all need that stick sometimes that shocks out of healing to “healed,” where we see that, in fact, the surviving is also past tense. We have survived. The abuse is over. The remaining pain is just a chattering voice (horribly loud at times) that needs to shut up, so we can get on with our lives, not a voice that needs to be heard or honored with our attention. It is like a nagging irritant on the way to the reality of survival, the scab no longer being picked, but healed instead.
I see in reading the stories, that they have a form. A clear beginning, middle and end.
Then, after the story is over, something in our survivor physiology refuses to let the story end for real. Instead, we replace the abuse itself with thinking about the abuse, trying to do various things with it: understand it, understand what it meant, what it says about the person who has endured it. The whole set of questions is itself a pattern, a glimpse into the nature of the human mind under stress.
I’ve been reading and writing in the Sexual Identity forum as well, and I sometimes wonder if those ID experiences are all because of the thinking we do after the abuse. It’s like there’s a bug in our neural net that causes a loop to form. Input x experience, output y mental state. We make our problems infinitely worse by engaging in this loop. We keep ourselves in the past where we were weak, forgetting to see how strong we really are.
So I suggest that we all find a way to collectively internalize more deeply that pastness of the abuse and our current strength. If we could all just spend a month or so repeating periodically through every day, the abuse is over: I can live my life without it now. I can handle anything because I’m safe and strong. And take a minute to say in all the ways that’s true. We might greatly help one another heal much faster.
The strength is there; the stories show it so clearly. We just need to let ourselves really know it's real and that it can relied upon every day.
Thanks again guys.
Danny
I’ve been reading some of the stories on the stories board over the last few days, and I wanted to say thank you to every one who has shared their experience.
I’m struck by the depth and strength I see and by the amazing resilience. We struggle, but we’re strong.
I just wanted to give you guys all a big (((thank you))).
One of the nice things about being a survivor is meeting all the cool other guys who’ve been through the same thing and being able to part of a team of people trying to heal from this kind of problem.
I wish everyone had a support group like this; I think everybody needs one.
Sometimes in reading the other forums, I see us being awfully down on ourselves. We talk like we’re broken, standing on the edge of hope, and I know some of us are probably feeling that way right now.
Reading the stories shows me just how clearly we’re seeing the wrong side of our collective story when we treat ourselves that way or let ourselves think of ourselves that way.
The ultimate take away from those stories that I see is the simple fact that we’ve all made it through the worst things life could throw a kid, and we’ve survived. We’ve lived to tell the tale. We’re strong. We’re like soldiers who’ve fought a war and have come home. We’ve been tested. And we’ve come through. And the war is over.
We don’t have anything to be afraid of because we’ve already been through hell and survived.
Living the normal life will be a piece of cake once we realize the war is over and we’re home in the “safe” place. Sure, we’ll still have the PTSD and the sexual identity issues, etc., but we’ll be fine.
And when the inevitable problems come along, we can just remember: I’ve already been through hell and survived: after that everything should be easy because nothing will every equal that original threat we’ve already survived. Terrified of intimacy? Go ahead and try it! After all, you’ve already been through intimacy hell once and survived. Something makes you want the roller coaster again in a different way, so get back on it. What harm can it do that you haven’t already handled?
I can already hear someone saying, but it’s too hard to trust. Just trust yourself: you’re strong: you’ve already proved you can handle it. And no matter what it is, it ain’t never gonna be as bad the first one!
You’re always already ready to survive. And you will. It’s just true.
You might complain a little bit along the way, just like the rest of us, but you’ll be fine, also just like the rest of us.
It’s OK to get knocked around a bit, when you know you know how to fall down and get up again. And we’ve all done that a million times; we just have to recognize the strength we have inside and honor it until its habit to know we’re truly strong. The stories show us that strength in all its variety.
In Buddhism in the meditation hall, sometimes one of the monks has a stick. He randomly wacks the meditators on the back, hoping the shock will send them into a heightened state of consciousness. We all need that stick sometimes that shocks out of healing to “healed,” where we see that, in fact, the surviving is also past tense. We have survived. The abuse is over. The remaining pain is just a chattering voice (horribly loud at times) that needs to shut up, so we can get on with our lives, not a voice that needs to be heard or honored with our attention. It is like a nagging irritant on the way to the reality of survival, the scab no longer being picked, but healed instead.
I see in reading the stories, that they have a form. A clear beginning, middle and end.
Then, after the story is over, something in our survivor physiology refuses to let the story end for real. Instead, we replace the abuse itself with thinking about the abuse, trying to do various things with it: understand it, understand what it meant, what it says about the person who has endured it. The whole set of questions is itself a pattern, a glimpse into the nature of the human mind under stress.
I’ve been reading and writing in the Sexual Identity forum as well, and I sometimes wonder if those ID experiences are all because of the thinking we do after the abuse. It’s like there’s a bug in our neural net that causes a loop to form. Input x experience, output y mental state. We make our problems infinitely worse by engaging in this loop. We keep ourselves in the past where we were weak, forgetting to see how strong we really are.
So I suggest that we all find a way to collectively internalize more deeply that pastness of the abuse and our current strength. If we could all just spend a month or so repeating periodically through every day, the abuse is over: I can live my life without it now. I can handle anything because I’m safe and strong. And take a minute to say in all the ways that’s true. We might greatly help one another heal much faster.
The strength is there; the stories show it so clearly. We just need to let ourselves really know it's real and that it can relied upon every day.
Thanks again guys.
Danny
