Last week I said that it is not usually possible to leap straight from a traumatic experience to complete healing. It is a process and the length of that process may vary from person to person. But every process must have a starting point and that will be when for love of ourselves and those close to us, we choose to start down the pathway of healing. The starting point involves three difficult choices we will need to make. If you discover that you need some help from a professional counsellor in making them do not hesitate to seek the help you need.
First there is a need to choose to acknowledge that the person who has hurt us is responsible for the event and that our painful emotions are valid. I call this a choice because in many of us there is a tendency to blame ourselves for the event and therefore invalidate the pain we feel. To choose to move the responsibility for the event to where it belongs, addresses the irrational shame that many people, particularly abuse survivors struggle with and empowers us to move forward in the healing process.
The second choice is even more challenging. If it is true that someone else was responsible for the event that impacted us in the past, it is also true, that someone needs to accept responsibility for the internalised painful feelings that impact our lives in the present. The choice is that we blame the perpetrator for the event and for our painful feelings, or, we blame them for the event but we accept responsibility for how we have responded to what they did to us. As difficult as it might sound, the only helpful option is the second one. If we continue to blame someone else for how we feel, we are stuck and may conceivably stay stuck for a very long time. On the other hand, if we choose to accept that the feelings are ours, it frees us to address them and move forward.
Thirdly we may need to choose to accept responsibility for the hurtful behaviours that arise from our painful emotions. For instance, it is common for internalised anger to be expressed as criticism, or rage or even violence. Or for internalised shame to make us super sensitive to criticism or rejection. Or for internalised fear to make us angry or suspicious. The resultant behaviours can lead to someone close to us being hurt. These behaviours are not the result of the original event that hurt us, but the internalised emotions that we still carry.
So, the process involves these three steps. First we must address our irrational feelings of shame by moving the responsibility for the past hurtful event to the perpetrator. This is very important. If you have been in a prison of resentment, then shame has been your jailer. The only way to strip shame of its power is to acknowledge that the event was hurtful and inappropriate and that your pain and anger were and still are, valid responses to it. Second, we must address the primary hindrance to healing by choosing to accept responsibility for our response to the event. This involves acknowledging that the anger, the fear, the bitterness and resentment belong to you and that you are the only one with the power to free yourself from the need to continues to be controlled by your own internalised painful emotions. Third, we must choose to repair relationships we might have damaged because of our internalised painful emotions. This means that we may need to apologise for any of the ways we have hurt loved ones by behaviours that have come from our internalised emotions. Such behaviours may include angry outbursts, unfair criticism, sarcastic comments or even emotionally distancing ourselves from people who need our love and support.
No healing process is possible unless we undertake these tasks first. I am not pretending that they are easy and I have already said that many of us have required the help of a trained counsellor to navigate our way through them. For me personally the relief and freedom I experienced when I eventually managed to complete these three tasks is immeasurable.
This week you may like to think about these choices and make two lists. On one list place all the potential benefits of making the choices I have recommended. On the other list write any of major difficulties you might encounter in making these choices. I will write about these difficulties and benefits next week.
God Bless
Graeme