Last week I wrote about three choices we may need to make before we begin our journey to recovery from past hurt and internalised painful emotions. I wrote about choosing to deal with our shame, by moving any self-blame to where it really belongs, on the perpetrator. Choosing to remove the primary hindrance to recovery by accepting responsibility for the internalised painful feelings, and finally, choosing to rebuild relationships with those we have hurt through behaviours that emanate from the internalised pain.
The benefits of addressing shame by choosing to blame the perpetrator of my childhood abuse, should have been obvious to me, but they were not. Shame had become a part of who I knew myself to be, and as strange as it might sound, I did not want to give it up. Blaming myself was a safe alternative to being angry; and shifting that blame to my abuser would expose me to red hot anger that I might not be able to control. I resisted this choice also because it required that I revisit something that I had buried. Not forgotten. Just buried. Why would I want to dig all that pain and fear and shame up again? My counsellor had a good answer for that question. “If you will not do it for yourself would you do it for the people you love? If they are in any way paying the price for the anger that you have cloaked with shame, why would you not want to change that? The major difficulty for me was reliving my abuse and getting in touch with the injustice, the cruelty and the sheer evil that was perpetrated on a little boy. The benefit was the realization that in making this choice I had begun to destroy the power that my abuser wielded against me. As long as I insisted that the blame was mine not the abuser’s I was giving up my power to change.
Accepting that our internalised emotions are our responsibility, is also a difficult choice. Sometimes when we are faced with the need to do that, we feel like we are being victimised all over again. It is much easier to blame another person for our painful emotions than it is to accept that we are responsible for any response that we are continuing to make to a past hurtful event. The benefit of at last accepting that responsibility is the personal power if restores to us. Not the power to get revenge, but the power to moderate and control our damaged emotions. The power to choose how we are going to think and feel about the past. The power to channel the deep feelings our hurtful experience aroused in us, in a healthy and positive direction.
It is true that as children we do not always have the capacity to deal with emotional pain. It is not to be wondered at that we internalise them. The unfortunate reality is that hurt children continue to do the same thing with painful emotions when they become adults. I have heard many adults say that their capacity to build and maintain healthy relationships has been deeply damaged by their inability not only to deal with past hurtful events, but present ones as well. It is daunting but nevertheless rational to accept to say that the hurtful behaviour was the responsibility of the perpetrator but the anger I feel is mine.
Understanding that we may have projected our pain on to people we love in the present, and making a choice to seek to rebuild those relationships, so that the people who love us feel safe, also has its difficulties. It may require us to apologise and seek their forgiveness. Someone has said that the six most difficult words in our English language are, “I am sorry.”: And “I forgive you.” For us to apologise requires humility and honesty. For family members to forgive us may seem to them to be unfair; to do so may make them feel vulnerable. Healing wounded relationships may take time, but the results are eminently worth it.
There is an unexpected benefit in being forgiven by another. It is the very best way to learn how to forgive others. As a Christian I have always found great comfort in the teaching of the Bible that encourages us to forgive others as Jesus has forgiven us. His forgiveness of us is absolute and is not so much what we deserve but is a gift of love. When we experience forgiveness that we do not deserve, from someone who loves us dearly, that is the most precious gift in the world.
Next week I will write about forgiveness as part of the process of recovery from past painful events. This week you might like to make two more lists. In the first one jot down what the prospect of forgiving a person who has hurt you makes you feel, and in the second list write down the potential benefits of both being forgiven and forgiving another, may be.
God Bless
Graeme