And so what we have learned...

Today is my last day of group.

I started group therapy back in June, not knowing what to expect. I was afraid. Afraid I wouldn't be liked; afraid I would say something wrong. Afraid of sharing my inner most thoughts. Those fears were quickly quelled. I have learned so much from group.

Things I've Learned from Group Therapy

1. I've learned what it means to do self-care.  Six months ago I didn't even know that self-care was a concept, let alone a concept I should employ. When I started group, we talked about self-care and what to do. Although in the past I considered my time on the internet something good, I had began realizing how much of a distraction it was and could be. During group, I became more aware that internet time was less of a distraction and more of switch that turned off my emotions. What I thought was feeling good was actually an absence of feeling in general. It then occurred to me that I didn't know what makes me feel good. I didn't know anything about self care or how to implement it. And as others in group shared their activities, I felt left out. What could I do to make me feel good? Thus, I began to experiment. I played my ukulele, I sang, I took walks, I cooked meals. I tried to be more aware of the things that made me feel good inside. And it worked. I felt good. I no longer see the internet as a form of self-care. I see it more as a way to stay in touch and keep informed. If I want to feel good, I will do things that make me feel good.
2. Giving yourself grace.  Coping and self-care are hard. Really hard. You have to fight the voices inside your head that have had control for a very long time. It is unrealistic to expect that once you have skills to implement or ways to feel good that suddenly the badness will disappear, because it doesn't. And it didn't for me. I fight my voices all the time. The ones who tell me I'm stupid, or worthless or nothing. The ones that tell me I don't matter and that I may as well stay in bed because I don't matter in this world. I fight them. And I lose. But sometimes I win. And winning one battle is worth losing a thousand times because that one moment of feeling good sheds more light than the darkness can ever battle against. So, when I lose, I give myself grace. It's okay if I lose a battle. These battles are hard. So I give myself grace to fail and I keep trying anyway.
3. I'm not alone.  I used to have this emptiness inside me whenever I shared my story. No matter how eloquently I tried to relate myself, I knew that non-survivors couldn't get it. And I felt alone. I reached out to survivor blogs and read testimonies. But I still felt so solitary. For as much as Josh could love me, he will never know what it's like to go what I go through. That is an isolating effect on being survivor. But group has filled this empty spot. When I go there and share my feelings, people get what I have to say. When before I felt like I was rambling, in group I was expressing. Because with numbers like 1 in 4 children being sexually abused, and 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in her lifetime, how can I be alone?

I am sad that group is ending. But I'm so glad I took part in it. I feel so much better off and I feel that I can really work on making my life what I want it to be: happy and balanced.

Myths of Healing

If you had asked me three years ago...hell, even a year ago, what my end goal to therapy and process was, I would have told you that I wanted to be healed.  I wanted to be over my abuse. This had been my end goal since I started therapy in 2008. You see, I had assumed that going to therapy (or counseling, if you will) was like going to the doctor for treatment: that after I had done the right number of session and went through the right process, I would be healed. I would be "over it."

This kind of mindset led to a lot of frustration. I would find myself being triggered in various situations, then punishing myself for my reactions and feelings. That mindset seems so foreign to me now, but back then it was the status quo. I believed that this is how other survivors were and that I wasn't doing enough to make myself "get over" my abuse. I was convinced that if I just took the right steps: read the right book, listened to the right therapists, wrote the right words, that I would become healed and I would finally be like "normal" people. That is, I would be like those who had never been abused.

But that's not what happened. Wounds of the mind are not as easy to heal as wounds of the body. Bodily wounds have a process: clean the wound, bandage it, and wait. Sometimes you change the dressing, but the healing comes naturally. The body does what it needs to. But the mind doesn't heal like the body. You don't just dress it and wait. Instead, the mind builds mechanisms in order to protect itself. It's like being burned by hot metal. After being burned, you're more aware of how hot the metal and take extra precautions. You may jerk your hand back prematurely, wary of  your ability to handle the stove or the toaster.

That's what the mind does. It takes the circumstances of the abuse and applies it to any similar situation. Hence being triggered.  My husband's hair falls like my brother's: trigger. I feel the same pleasure my body used to feel: trigger. An authority figure puts me in the same power dynamics of my childhood: trigger. The task then becomes, for me, how to undo those defenses and coping with the situation, rather than letting my mental defenses do their job--something I'm still working on. Because, if I submit to my triggers, it just reinforces all the power my abuse has lorded over me.