Creating a new perspective on Childhood Abuse

"It's not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life; it is how you handle what happens to you." -Zig Ziglar

One thing that comes up over and over again as I talk to friends about healing their personal childhood abuse issues is that as adults we hold onto hurts so much longer than we need to.  Child abuse issues must be acknowledged and the fact that the child abuse happened will never go away, but we can learn to reframe how we view what happened.

Did my mother tell me "I wish you were never born" and "I should have had an abortion"?  Yes.  Did she try to smother me with a pillow when I was three because I wouldn't stop crying?  Yes.  Did my father have an inappropriate relationship with me?  Yes.  Did horrible child abuse happen to me?  Yes.

I carried pain inside of me for a long time.  I made a decision when I was a child that I was somehow not worthy of love and happiness because my parents and family abused me.  That decision colored my life for many years.  It determined the kind of friends I had, it determined the way people treated me, determined the way I let people treat me,  it determined how much I did or did not engage in life. The decisions I made as a child, about my childhood abuse, kept me trapped for many years.

Part of me wants to say kept me trapped 'for too long' instead of 'for many years' and that's what I actually typed out at at first.  But that's the victim and abuser voice in my head, and I have learned to hear those words and have learned to reframe and change the way I talk to myself.  I have learned to stop abusing myself.

I was angry and sad for a very long time, and even to this day I when someone gets angry at me or shows me conditional love, I revert to that small defenseless child and wonder how I can change so they will love me. And anger comes up when I feel like I'm 'not enough'.  It's amazing what childhood abuse can do to your pysche.

What I have realized is that no one will love you unless you love yourself.  Again, did my parents abuse me?  Yes.  But I have the choice as an adult to forgive them and start loving myself and parenting myself the way I wanted to be parented and loved. No one can love me the way I can love myself.  And I have learned that it is not selfish or narcissistic to love yourself.  You are truly a child of God and you are worthy of the purest, best love there is ---- self love.  No one knows you the way you do.  No one will ever understand your needs, wants, desires, the way you do.  No one will ever understand how child abuse colored your world and perspective.  Only you can understand yourself in the truest sense.

Now, self-love and forgiveness does not happen overnight.  Years of child abuse and also 'childhood' abuse were ingrained in the very fiber of my being.  It had created who I was, how I viewed the world, how I reacted to slights, whether real or imagined.  It colored the way I viewed the world, and it was definitely not through rose-colored glasses. Any words anyone spoke to me were filtered through an experiential lens of abuse and conditional love.  I suspected everyone who wanted to get close to me....what did they want from me?  After all, I had learned at a very early age that I wasn't loveable, so they must want something from me.  They couldn't possibly love me just for me, could they?

So back to the quote that inspired me to write my blog today:
"It's not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life; it is how you handle what happens to you." -Zig Ziglar

What I had to learn was that the child abuse that happened to me, happened.  Nothing would ever change that.  But I have learned, once again, to reframe it from an loving adult perspective and have realized that there is nothing wrong with me.  Actually, there was nothing 'wrong' with my parents either.  We are who we are, we are what events shape us.  My mother lived through the Nazi occupation of Europe.  She was a paranoid psychophrenic, and an alcoholic and drug addict.  Her father abandoned her and her mother and ran away to Uruguay and left them.  She married my father and lived in Texas.....an Austrian woman with a thick Germanic accent in Texas.  Right.  That must have gone over well.

So she did what she did based on her beliefs and anger and fears that were eating her up inside.  Her actions against me were a reflection of her and her world, her hatred, her anger, her sadness.  Her actions against me were just that----actions----they were not what made me good or bad.  I have learned that things really aren't 'good' or 'bad'....they just 'are'. 

So I have made a decision that I am a worthy person, and even though seemingly "bad" things happened to me, they are not who I am as a person.  Does it still hurt when I think about it sometimes? Of course. Do I wish I had had a mother who loved me unconditionally, who wanted me and who was glad I was in her life? Of course.  Did that happen?  No.  But I have a choice every day when I wake up.

I can choose to have my life reflect what happened to me, or I can choose to have my life reflect how I feel about myself.  And, after much therapy, thought and self reflection, I have chosen to love myself, and have decided that my parents did what they did, but it is not a reflection of the worthy person I am.

You can get there, I promise you.  You will need to do some serious, quiet alone-time reflection.  You will need to journal, to draw pictures (sometimes ugly), to write nasty letters that you then commit to fire or a watery grave.  You will need to learn to look at yourself and love yourself.  You will need to make decisions that you are going to win at this game called life, and that you are going to decide to be happy, no matter what.

Yes, bad things happen.  "Bad" things happen to good people.  Life seemingly is sometimes just not fair....but you know something....that's actually just a belief.  Life just is....now it's up to you to decide if it's going to be 'good' or 'bad'.  You have that choice within you....I wish you the best in the choice that you decide to make.

If my words have helped you, please let me know.  And please help me help others by passing word of this blog forward to those you love.  Maybe even to those you don't love....they need love too.